President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back.

Vladimir Putin said, had responded to the use of U.S. and British missiles by firing a new kind of hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military facility. More could follow, Putin warned. He said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with such weapons.

After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21, Putin said.

“From that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,” Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT). The United States, Putin said, was pushing the world towards a global conflict.

“And in case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will also respond decisively and in a mirror manner,” he said.

Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian missile attack with ATACMS had failed to inflict any serious damage. But the Storm Shadow attack on Kursk region on Nov. 21 had been directed at a command point and led to deaths and injuries, Putin said.

“The use by the enemy of such weapons is not able to change the course of the military actions in the zone of the special military operation,” Putin said.

“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin said. “If anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong – there will always be a response.”

Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of the Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3% of the Kharkiv region and a sliver of Mykolaiv region.

Ukraine and the West say the 2022 invasion was an imperial-style attempt to grab sovereign Ukrainian territory and that they fear Russia could try to attack a NATO member one day if Putin wins in Ukraine.

Putin said Moscow had tested a new medium-range hypersonic non-nuclear ballistic known as “Oreshnik” (the hazel) by firing it at a missile and defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where missile and space rocket company Pivdenmash, known as Yuzhmash by Russians, is based.

He said the attack on the enterprise was successful.

Russia, he added, was developing short and medium range missiles in response to the planned production and then deployment by the United States of medium and shorter range missiles in Europe and the far east.

“I believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” Putin said, referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The United States formally withdrew from the landmark 1987 (INF) Treaty with Russia in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin denied.

Vladimir Putin imposed a unilateral moratorium on the development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty. He said Russia’s future actions would depend on the West’s actions – and threats against Russia.

“Let me remind you that Russia has voluntarily, unilaterally committed itself not to deploy medium-range and shorter-range missiles until such time as American weapons of this kind appear in any region of the world.”

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

The decision to change Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin’s answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia.

Putin, opening a meeting of Russia’s security council, said that the changes were in response to a swiftly changing global landscape which had thrown up new threats and risks for Russia.

The 71-year-old Kremlin chief, the primary decision-maker on Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, said he wanted to underscore one key change in particular.

“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin said.

“The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Putin said, adding that Moscow would consider such a move if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones against it.

Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons, Putin said.

The clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia _ confirmation that the nuclear doctrine was changing, the president added.

Russia’s current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Putin, says it may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

The innovations outlined by Putin include a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella and the idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.

The United States in 2022 was so concerned about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it warned Putin over the consequences of using such weapons, according to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns.

Confrontation

The Ukraine war has triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis _ considered to be the closest the two Cold War superpowers came to intentional nuclear war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging Kyiv’s allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missilesdeep into Russia to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks.

With Ukraine losing key towns to gradually advancing Russian forces in the country’s east, the war is entering what Russian officials say is the most dangerous phase to date.

Zelensky has urged the West to cross and disregard Russia’s so-called “red lines”, and some Western allies have urged the United States to do just that, though Putin’s Russia, which controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has warned that the West and Ukraine are risking a global war.