The U.S. Department of Defense has been silent about Ukraine's cluster munition attack on a crowded beach in Sevastopol, Russia. The said military operation used the United States-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles and it left at least four people dead, among them two children, and injured hundreds, according to local officials.
When Russian news agency RIA Novosti asked the Pentagon about using U.S.-supplied weapons in the strike on Sunday, an official replied, "We have seen the reports and have nothing to say."
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, air defenses intercepted four missiles. The fifth one deviated from its trajectory and detonated its cluster warhead over the busy Black Sea beach. Data from the flight tracker Flightradar revealed that a U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was patrolling in the Black Sea south of Crimea during the Ukrainian missile strike.
Sevastopol's Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said that the operation left 151 injured as of Sunday night. A joint team of specialists from the Health Ministry's Federal Center for Disaster Medicine arrived in the city to work with the victims, he wrote early Monday.
Meanwhile, Russia blamed the United States as it should be responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed peninsula with its country's supplied artillery. "Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of Sevastopol is borne above all by Washington, which supplied these weapons to Ukraine and by the Kyiv regime, from whose territory this strike was carried out," the defense ministry said.
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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov even called the strike "barbaric." "You should ask my colleagues in Europe and above all in Washington … why their governments are killing Russian children," he told the reporters. "We perfectly understand who is behind this,” he said, adding that it was clear who supplied weapons to Ukraine, aimed them and provided data for them.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also argued during a meeting in Minsk on Monday that the system "cannot be used without the direct participation of the American military, including satellite capabilities." Following the said attack, he also summoned U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy and accused the U.S. of waging a "proxy war" and said retaliatory measures would "definitely follow."
"Such actions by Washington will not be left without a response," the ministry said in a statement on Monday as it summoned the ambassador. "There will be response measures."
Footage on Russian state television showed people running from a beach and some people being carried off on sun loungers during the strike. Authorities said that missile fragments had fallen just after noon on the beach in the Uchkuyevka where locals were on holiday.
Ukraine has previously targeted the Crimean Peninsula with U.S.-provided ATACMS missiles. In May, ten ATACMS were shot down on a trajectory aimed at the strategic Crimean Bridge, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said at the time.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson, on the other hand, claimed: "Ukraine makes its own targeting decisions and conducts its military operations." The U.S. has been supplying ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for over a year. The system allows Ukrainian forces to strike targets up to 300km (186 miles) away, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Lavrov: U.S. should mind discussions on the possible amendment of Moscow's nuclear doctrine
In an interview published on Thursday, Lavrov urged the Biden administration to pay attention to the possible alteration of Russia's nuclear doctrine to suit changed conditions in international relations, especially nowadays. He also said Moscow did not rule out downgrading diplomatic relations with certain Western countries if they failed to alter their "Russophobic" approach to ties. (Related: U.S. expands sanctions against Russia, which will only accelerate dedollarization and global shift into BRICS.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asserted in recent weeks that Russia's nuclear doctrine, setting down when such weapons could be used, was being reassessed. Lavrov told a local news agency that the doctrine was drafted "in a different era and different circumstances" and that he hoped the discussions now "are being taken seriously by our opponents."
"They are playing with fire and must learn not to indulge in dangerous illusions, but to try to look at the world soberly and understand that we have immutable national interests which we are prepared to defend to the end," he said. "I am not anticipating the outcome, but I urge our adversaries to think about what the president is saying."
According to the nuclear doctrine, Russia is allowed to use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or in the event of a conventional attack that poses an existential threat to the Eurasian country.
The senior official also said that Moscow had never initiated a downgrade in relations with any country "despite all the vicissitudes of the most difficult phase in our relations with the so-called collective West. "We believe that embassies and the work of ambassadors are a particularly difficult job in the current circumstances and they should not be neglected," he said. "We do not rule out any options in the future. Everything will depend on how our adversaries conduct themselves."
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