LONDON — The US Embassy in Kiev, Ukrainetemporarily closed its doors on Wednesday out of “an abundance of caution” as it warned there could be a “significant” airstrike.
“The U.S. Embassy advises U.S. citizens to be prepared to take immediate shelter in the event an air raid siren is announced,” the embassy said. an update.
The embassy said it had received “specific” information about the possible strike on November 20.
The warning came amid fears the war could escalate, a day after the Ukrainian army was first launched American-made ATACMS long-range missiles towards targets within Russia. American president Joe Biden Kiev had authorized these attacks, US officials told ABC News.
That attack, which Russia said it defeated, came on the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an updated nuclear doctrine. A Kremlin spokesperson said the updates mean that “the use of Western non-nuclear missiles by the armed forces of Ukraine against Russia could lead to a nuclear response.”
A US Defense Department spokesman tried to downplay that update on Tuesday, saying Russia had indicated it would update the doctrine “in recent weeks.”
“It’s the same irresponsible rhetoric that we’ve seen before and that we’ve seen, quite frankly, over the last two years,” said Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, according to a transcript. “So it is something that we will continue to monitor, but we have no indication that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.”
She added that Russia has taken “escalatory action” by bringing North Korean soldiers onto the battlefield in Russia.
Russia, in turn, accused the Biden administration of trying to prolong the conflict in recent months.
“If we look in general at the trends that the outgoing US administration is showing, they are determined, fully determined to prolong the war in Ukraine and they are doing everything they can do for this in the time they have left,” he said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The Russian news agency Interfax told journalists this on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian Air Force said Wednesday morning that Russia had fired about 122 unmanned attack drones overnight at regions across Ukraine, including the capital Kiev. At least 56 of the drones launched were shot down, the military said.
Several guided missiles were also fired at the Dnipro region in the southeast, along with the Chernihiv and Sumy regions in the northeast. And an anti-aircraft missile was fired towards Kharkiv, the air force said.
“Anyone who asks Ukrainians if they are afraid of Putin escalating has clearly not yet woken up to the sound of hypersonic missiles exploding over their cities,” said Inna Sovsun, a member of the Ukrainian parliament. said Wednesday on social media.
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor, Joe Simonetti, David Brennan and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
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