America will face a 'head-on collision with a nuclear power' if it allows Ukraine to fire US long-range missiles into Russia, the country's outgoing ambassador has warned.
US-Russian relations, already at 'arguably the lowest point in their history' will plunge into an 'uncontrolled nosedive' if Ukraine gets the green light, Anatoly Antanov predicted.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky met President Biden last month and told him that firing US ATACMS deep into Russian territory could break the deadlock in the two-and-a-half year war.
Russia's President Putin said it would finally constitute direct NATO involvement, and his ambassador spelt out the message as he headed back to Moscow.
'America will not be able to sit it out across the ocean,' Antanov said. 'A global nuclear catastrophe would affect everyone.'
Biden pledged to deliver the billions of dollars worth of defense assistance agreed to by Congress earlier this year before he leaves office in January.
US missiles were first used against Russian forces in Ukraine in early April but the US has still to announce a decision on whether it will allow Kyiv to fire them over the border.
But the war is starting to change shape with Russia seizing a series of Ukrainian villages in recent weeks and Ukraine taking the war to Russia itself with a cross-border raid that seized 500 square miles of Russian territory.
'Project Ukraine is dragging American politicians only further into an abyss, from which it is increasingly difficult to get out,' Antonov told Newsweek as he prepared to head back after seven years as Russia's top man in the US.
'As we see, the administration can only respond to the victories of Russian troops in Donbas and the failure of the provocation by the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region by using the same hackneyed theses about 'support as long as we can'.
'There are zero signals to clients about the need to think over their position and sit down at the negotiating table.
'Neither are there any hints about stopping the senseless flow of weapons at the expense of the local taxpayer.
'Washington is continuing a dangerous discussion about the possibility of giving Ukrainians a permission to strike deep into Russian territory with Western long-range missiles.'
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