The Russian government on Monday, June 24 directly blamed the United States for an attack on annexed Crimea with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles that killed at least four people and injured 151, warning the U.S. that retaliation would follow.

At least two children were killed in the attack on Sevastopol on Sunday, according to Russian officials. People were shown running from a beach near Sevastopol and some of the injured were being carried off on sun loungers.

Despite the war in Ukraine triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Russia blamed the United States for a deadly attack on Crimea – which Russia annexed in 2014 and now considers to be Russian territory although most of the world considers to be part of Ukraine is unusual.

“You should ask my colleagues in Europe, and above all in Washington, the press secretaries, why their governments are killing Russian children. Just ask them this question,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday of the attack.

Russia said that the United States had supplied the weapons used to attack Crimea while U.S. military specialists had aimed the weapons and provided data for them.

On Monday, Russia summoned U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy to the foreign ministry where she faced accusations that Washington was “waging a hybrid war against Russia and has actually become a party to the conflict”.

The attack, Russia told Tracy, would “not go unpunished. Retaliatory measures will definitely follow.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers, though he has said that Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

Putin ordered drills to practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, suggested Russia could deploy conventional missiles in striking distance of the United States and its allies, and agreed to a mutual defence pact with North Korea.

Asked what the Russian response would be to the attack in Crimea, Peskov recalled Putin’s words on June 6 about supplying weapons to regions near the U.S. and its allies.

“Of course, the involvement of the United States in the fighting, as a result of which peaceful Russians are dying, cannot but have consequences,” Peskov said.
“Which ones exactly – time will tell.”