In September, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin used a question from a state TV journalist to relay a message to the West, deploying the imperial backdrop of St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace to lend it czar-like force.

Rumors had swirled that Ukraine’s allies, most notably the United States, could give Kyiv permission to use long-range Western missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. 

Moscow, Putin said, would read that as a declaration of war by NATO, the U.S. and Europe. “It would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” he warned.

In late October, the same journalist аsked the president whether he thought the West had heard him.

“I hope they have,” Putin responded. Otherwise, he continued, “we would have to respond. How? When? Where, specifically? It is too early to talk about that now.”

Fast forward some three weeks and it’s no longer a hypothetical.

As U.S. President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration green-lights Kyiv’s use of long-range ATACMS against Russia, Washington appears to be offering Ukraine the lifeline it has desperately sought, mere months before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could radically roll back aid and pressure a struggling Ukraine to accept a disadvantageous peace deal. 

The go-ahead for the unbridled use of long-range missiles would be a watershed moment in the war, with Washington abandoning a policy of (some critics would say excessive) caution, in favor of calling the Kremlin’s bluff and testing Moscow’s resolve to defend its own red lines in an all-out war it started and — almost three years in — seems in no rush to end. 

Though Western missile systems have already been used to strike occupied territory such as Crimea, using them to hit targets inside Russia has long been considered an immutable taboo, for fear of triggering a nuclear war. Kyiv, for its part, has dismissed those fears as overblown, using its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region as evidence that Moscow’s red lines can be crossed without triggering an apocalypse.

Early signs suggest that Moscow won’t be turning the other cheek to Biden’s about-face. Curiously, few in Russian society, or anywhere else, know what that means in practice. 

Saber-rattling

In the first official comments from Moscow on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the use of long-range weapons would signify “a qualitatively new level of tension and a qualitatively new situation in terms of U.S. involvement in the conflict.”

He referred to the comments made by Putin in September, describing them, inaccurately, as “very clear and unambiguous.” 

In a remark to Russian newspaper RBC, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova similarly deferred to Putin’s earlier position, saying that “the president has spoken on the matter.”

As often happens when the Kremlin buys time while it mulls its best response, Russian propagandists and mid-ranking officials were happy to fill the information vacuum with incendiary language and saber-rattling.

“The response could be anything. Anything,” Dmitry Kiselyov, the anchor of Russia’s flagship “Vesty Nedely” news show on state TV, menaced on Sunday evening. “There’s a reason why we amended our nuclear doctrine,” he continued, referring to recent changes that would justify a nuclear response by Russia even if it is struck by conventional weapons.

“The U.S., Britain and France will be directly entering a war with Russia, with all the ensuing consequences for their own territories and those who live there,” he added.

TV personality Sergei Mardan also hinted at a retaliatory strike: “As early as tomorrow the Kremlin is expected to give a detailed answer as to which U.S. facilities will become targets for Russian missiles in case the Ukrainian armed forces launch attacks on Russian territory,” he wrote on Telegram.

Within the Russian Telegram chatter-sphere, the tone was largely mixed, with some fantasizing about revenge, even as others seemed to be bracing for disappointment from the country’s leadership.  

“What’s going to change for us? In principle nothing. Except that we will become even more determined to destroy the Kyiv regime,” commentator Yuriy Podolyak wrote to his more than 3 million followers. “And perhaps, after a while, some Yemeni Houthis will shoot or sink something very modern,” he added, suggesting Moscow could choose to retaliate in a proxy conflict elsewhere in the world. “Two can play at this game.”

(Moscow has reportedly long facilitated attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militant group.)

“The scariest thing is that there will be no real response to this aggressive move by the United States,” wrote another blogger, Viktor Alksnis — striking an altogether more defeatist tone.  

“Everything will be limited to another expression of concern and verbal threats toward the enemy.”  

Ukraine’s window of opportunity

Division could also be found within Russia’s opposition, reflecting existing fractures over whether supporting Ukraine implies approving of potentially fatal strikes on compatriots.

“Can one be happy about one’s country getting bombed? Are there really people like that?” opposition politician Yulia Galyamina wrote on X.

Kyiv will likely use the long-range missiles against Russian and possibly North Korean troops building up in the Kursk region of Russia, military expert Yan Matveyev told the opposition channel TV Rain on Monday morning.

Army bases, warehouses and airfields in Russia would also be logical targets for Ukraine to strike.

Matveyev added that Russia’s air defenses were currently geared toward taking down Ukrainian drones, and that they would likely require several weeks to adapt to combating missiles, offering Kyiv a brief window of opportunity to achieve maximum impact. 

In his late-night address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy neither denied nor confirmed original media reports about the use of ATACMS. However, seemingly irked by the leaks, he said: “Strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves.”

Russia’s answer — once Moscow decides what that is — will likely speak for itself too.