Canberra | Washington | Australia on Wednesday joined international condemnation of Vladimir Putin for his renewed threats of a nuclear counterstrike against Ukraine after Kyiv targeted a weapons arsenal with US-made missiles inside Russia for the first time.

As Ukraine took advantage of Joe Biden’s official consent to fire US-supplied ATACMS long-range missiles at targets inside Russia, Moscow on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) responded by lowering its threshold for the use of nuclear firepower, raising the stakes in a war that has ground on since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.