MOSCOW: Washington’s decision to let Kyiv strike deep into Russia with long-range US missiles escalates the conflict in Ukraine and could lead to World War III, senior Russian lawmakers said on Sunday.
Two US officials and a source familiar with the decision revealed the significant reversal of Washington’s policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict earlier on Sunday.
“The West has decided on such a level of escalation that it could end with the Ukrainian statehood in complete ruins by morning,” Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, said that Moscow’s response will be immediate.
“This is a very big step toward the start of World War Three,” the TASS state news agency quoted Dzhabarov as saying.
President Vladimir Putin said in September that the West would be fighting Russia directly if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
Russia would be forced to take what Putin called “appropriate decisions” based on the new threats.
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma lower house’s foreign affairs committee, said that US authorization of strikes by Kyiv on Russia with US ATACMS tactical missiles would lead to the toughest response, Russian news agencies reported.
“Strikes with US missiles deep into Russian regions will inevitably entail a serious escalation, which threatens to lead to much more serious consequences,” TASS news agency quoted Slutsky as saying.

NATO member Poland welcomed Biden's decision, saying missiles against Russia is “a language Putin understands.”

“With the entry into the war of North Korea troops and (Sunday’s) massive attack of Russian missiles, President Biden responded in a language that (Russian President) V. Putin understands,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski posted on X.
“The victim of aggression has the right to defend himself,” Sikorski added in his post. “Strength deters, weakness provokes.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long pushed for authorization from Washington to use the powerful Army Tactical Missile System, known by its initials ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that approval would mean that NATO was “at war” with his country — a threat he has made previously when Ukraine’s Western backers have escalated their military assistance to Kyiv.
 

LONDON: The UK is witnessing an escalation in Islamophobia that risks becoming “brutally divisive,” with failure to address its underlying causes potentially leading to more racist riots, according to the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust think tank.

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian newspaper, Shabna Begum, who took the helm of the race equality group earlier this year, highlighted how political rhetoric has fueled the problem.

“The way politicians talk about Muslims now is so derogatory, it’s in the most brutally divisive terms,” she said, adding that British political discourse had evolved beyond Sayeeda Warsi’s “dinner table test,” a phrase coined by the Conservative peer in 2011 which claimed Islamophobia had become socially acceptable. 

Referring to last summer’s riots, Begum warned that without change, such violence could become recurrent.

“(The unrest) was the ugliest representation of the years of racism that have been manufactured through the political media conversation. And if we don’t do something differently, that ugliness will become just a regular feature of our politics,” she said.

The Runnymede Trust’s report on Islamophobia, launched with backing from Warsi, Amnesty International UK, and the Muslim Council for Britain, documented increasing hostility faced by British Muslims.

It cited Tell Mama’s findings of a 335 percent spike in hate incidents in the four months up to February 2024, with women disproportionately affected.

Police figures indicated that nearly 38 percent of religious hate crimes targeted Muslims, and anti-religious hate crimes reached a record high last year, coinciding with the Israel-Gaza conflict, which broke out on Oct. 7 last year.

Begum emphasized that the issue extended beyond physical attacks to “state-sponsored Islamophobia” embedded in policies and narratives, without naming specific politicals, and added that the ruling Labour Party and the Conservatives had both been guilty of feeding a “bleak and dystopian” hostile climate for British Muslims.

She also highlighted the double standard faced by Muslims in public life, saying: “Whether it’s through being governors at schools, as we see through the Trojan horse affair … we are seen trying to take over and hijack local schools.”

She continued: “Or when we go on protest marches, along with many other people, we are described as hate marchers and Islamist extremists. And when we use our vote to express our political preferences, we’re described as sectarian and divisive.”

Drawing on her personal history as the daughter of Bangladeshi migrants who grew up in Tower Hamlets in London, Begum described how her upbringing had shaped her understanding of systemic discrimination.

After more than two decades as a teacher, she moved into academia, ultimately leading her to running the Runnymede Trust.

While she welcomed a recent £15 million ($18.9 million) community recovery fund introduced by the UK government, she called for more substantial investment to combat structural racism.

“What we’re objecting to is a dispersal of insecure funds to community groups... There’s no point saying all Muslims are all bad, but go and have a cup of tea with them in your local community.”