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EVIL tyrant Vladimir Putin has threatened to wage war on the West after Ukraine was given the go-ahead to fire weapons into Russia.
Mad Vlad reacted with fury after the US partially lifted a ban on the use of its arms supplies to strike targets beyond enemy lines.
Peter Jordan
Peter Jordan
Peter Jordan
Peter Jordan
APHe launched a deadly midnight aerial assault on the besieged city of Kharkiv just moments after President Joe Biden‘s dramatic u-turn.
At least five people were killed and scores more wounded after an S-300 warhead struck at apartment block in the suburbs.
A second was fired just four minutes later in a “double tap” that injured emergency service heroes who rushed to the scene to help.
Up to 10 warheads in total struck residential neighbourhoods across the city as his Kremlin henchmen warned of nuclear armageddon.
The Sun’s team was caught up in the brutal blitz and witnessed the devastating carnage inflicted on the terrified civilians of Ukraine‘s second largest city.
Sitting amongst the rubble of his home, panic-stricken grandfather Vyacheslav Vlasenko, 63, rang his wife and begged: “Svetlana, pick up the phone.”
He lived on the third floor with Svetlana and his daughter who were among those trapped inside the burning building.
A huge chunk of the block where the third, fourth and fifth floors were once located was entirely wiped out by the latest Russian atrocity.
The body of a woman, thrown from the building by the powerful blast, lay motionless next to a children’s swing and seesaw as the flames raged.
Brave firefighters entered the building to locate survivors and scaled ladders outside to reach individual apartments.
AP
Rescue workers at the scene of the Russian attackPeter Jordan
Other residents who managed to escape looked up anxiously amid a race against time to save those trapped and to retrieve the bodies of the dead.
The attack on Kharkiv’s Novobavarsky district was timed to follow the announcement of the US decision to back Ukraine‘s fightback.
President Biden is reported to have changed his mind in the wake of a relentless Russian bombing campaign on Kharkiv in recent weeks.
One official said US-supplied weapons could now be used for “counter-fire purposes” to enable Ukraine to hit back.
Another said: “We’ve never told Ukraine they can’t shoot down a Russian airplane over Russian soil that’s coming to attack them.”
A ban on US-supplied long range missiles being used to hit Russia will remain in place.
The move comes after enemy troops stormed the border on May 10 in a surprise assault and have made territorial gains – albeit amid huge casualties.
The city centre – 20 miles from the border – has since been bombarded day and night by missiles, glider bombs and kamikaze drones.
In the most recent attack, 19 were killed in an attack on a DIY megastore.
What does US approval of attacks on Russian soil mean?
By Imogen Braddick, Senior Foreign Reporter
Joe Biden has finally given Ukraine the green light to strike inside Russia using US-supplied weapons – after months of Ukraine begging for additional support from the West.
It marks a significant policy shift by Biden – who had adamantly refused to let Ukraine use American weaponry for strikes on Russia.
The decision applies only to targets inside Russia near the border with the Kharkiv region – an area facing relentless bombardment from Putin’s forces after Moscow launched a new offensive earlier this month.
Many have applauded the quiet move from the Biden administration to finally “untie Ukraine’s hands”.
But the decision is all but certain to anger an already paranoid Putin.
On Tuesday, he warned Nato against letting Ukraine fire their weapons into Russia – and again raised a risk of nuclear war.
Some experts dismissed his remarks as bluster.
But on Friday, hours after Biden’s decision, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev insisted Russia was not bluffing about all-out nuke war.
The question remains – is Putin really willing to risk nuclear war and a conflict with Nato?
In the meantime, a furious Vlad is likely to ramp up attacks on Ukraine in the aftermath of Biden’s decision.
We’ve already seen the start of Russia’s response – a deadly revenge blitz on Kharkiv’s Novobavarsky district.
Ukraine has already been left underprepared on the frontlines as it tries to hold Russian forces back in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and in the north-eastern Kharkiv region.
And as a number of European countries also signal that they are open to easing of restrictions on how Ukraine can use weapons, Russia is likely to lash out further.
The spectre of all-out war between Russia and Nato may once again be a serious possibility if the West continues to offer a helping hand to Ukraine.
Last night, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the move by the US – saying: “Only together can we stop the madness from Moscow.”
Britain had already permitted similar strikes with its Storm Shadow missiles.
More than a dozen other countries within the NATO military alliance have since joined the UK.
The latest, Germany, gave its backing.
A Berlin government spokesman said: “We are jointly convinced that Ukraine has the right, guaranteed under international law, to defend itself against these attacks.
“To do so it can also use the weapons supplied for this purpose, including those supplied by us.”
Russia – which has lost over 500,000 troops since it launched its botched invasion in February 2022 – branded the US move a deliberate escalation.
The Kremlin claimed Ukraine had wasted no time in hitting back and had already fired American weapons at Russia.
Putin henchman and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned the world was lurching towards nuclear war.
Medvedev – now deputy head of the Russian security council – said Russia would target the weapons in Ukraine and further afield, including Poland.
Putin's invasion in Kharkiv
By Paul Sims
UKRAINE’S second largest city of Kharkiv was blitzed from the air on May 10 as advancing enemy troops were pegged back.
They fired missiles, drones and glider bombs towards the border towns of Vovchansk, Lyptsi and beyond.
The relentless daily bombardment from the skies was stepped up as Ukraine’s warriors repelled a series of ground offensives.
In a town 15 miles from the frontline, the residents of a quiet residential street were among the latest casualties of Russia’s onslaught.
We found Vasyl Lutsenko, 67, at the base of a tree overlooking the charred remains of the home he and wife Olena have shared for the last 24 years.
Their property was hit by an Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drone shortly after 2am and burned to the ground.
It hit their Summer kitchen before the flames spread instantly to the main house and the neighbours next door.
The timber frames were still smouldering as we arrived amid piles of brickwork and masonry, twisted metal and their charred possessions.
The roof is no more and all that remains of the lives they created here is a wasteland of treasured memories.
Bearded Vasyl manages a smile as he mentions Boris Johnson and says he and Olena, 58, are lucky to be alive. He is already talking about rebuilding.
But it is too much for Olena who suddenly breaks down and shakes her head as a tear rolls down her cheek.
The Lutsenko home is the latest to be struck by the indiscriminate attacks that have increased daily over the last few weeks.
Extraordinary video footage taken by firefighters hours earlier showed their two-bedroom home engulfed by flames.
Vasyl and Olena escaped via their bedroom window after it was blown in by the power of the blast.
Olena was in her slippers but is now wearing a pair of trainers donated by a neighbour.
Vasyl says: “The world needs to understand that we cannot stop Vladimir Putin on our own.
“The whole world needs to end Putin. He won’t stop. You will have the war in London and around your home if he is not stopped.
“Today, we have great news. We are alive and I suspect this dumbf*** Putin will be dead soon.
“He’s a d***head.”
Next door, Oleksii Yakhno, 71, is surveying the devastating damage to the home he and wife Olga, 68, have lived in for the last 51 years.
Oleksii was asleep in a back bedroom and his wife was on a sofa bed in the kitchen when the drone struck.
Olga cried out to her husband to save the family car, a purple 13 series Lada, as the ceilings caved in.
He did as he was told and ran out in his pants, diving into the front seat as the flames tore through the garage.
Tearful Oleksii tells me: “My wife saw the neighbour’s summer kitchen hit by the drone.
“It caught fire immediately and my wife told me to go and save our car.
“I went off – even in my underwear – ran into the garage and started the engine.
“Over the last few years I’ve been saving money so that my daughter’s can pay for my funeral when I’m dead, but it’s all gone.”
His eyes fill with tears as he says: “I don’t have any feelings – just that I have lost the roof over my head.
“The home and everything we owned is gone – I just don’t know what to do.
“Maybe I would be better off dead. It’s very, very bad. What can I do now? I have lived my entire life here.”
Local Mayor Ihor Terekhov told The Sun: “People are left with nothing right now. We will definitely help them and do our best to rebuild their lives.
“The Russian aggressor is carrying out crimes every day against the Ukrainian nation.”
He fumed: “This is not military assistance at all, but participation in a war against us.
“And such actions of theirs may well become a casus belli, an act that provokes or justifies a war.
“No matter how much retired NATO farts chatter that Russia will never use non-strategic nuclear weapons against…Ukraine, and even more so in individual NATO countries, life is much worse than their frivolous reasoning.
“The use of tactical nuclear weapons can also be miscalculated, although this would be a fatal mistake.”
In a warning to Britain he added: “And for those enemy countries whose lands are further than the coverage area of tactical nuclear weapons, there is finally a strategic potential.
“And this, alas, is not intimidation or a nuclear bluff.
“The current military conflict with the West is developing according to the worst possible scenario.
“The former Ukraine and its NATO allies will receive a response of such destructive force that the Alliance itself simply will not be able to resist being drawn into the conflict.”
Putin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine unleashed missiles on targets in Russia just hours after Biden gave the green light.
He said: “This is enough for us and it speaks volumes about the degree to which the US in involved in the conflict.”
He accused the West of whipping up “pre-war hysteria”.
But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg dismissed it as sabre-rattling – adding: “This is nothing new.
“Every time NATO allies are providing support to Ukraine, President Putin is trying to threaten us to not do that.
“And an escalation well, Russia has escalated by invading another country.”
Aerial images show the devastating destruction to the besieged border town
English (US)