Russia Speaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine

Russia will consider the United States and its allies to be parties to the Ukraine war and Moscow will use more powerful weapons if the West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia, a senior lawmaker said on Wednesday.

"Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine," Vyacheslav Volodin, the Speaker of Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on Telegram.

Volodin said that the United States, Germany, France, and Britain were becoming parties to the conflict.

"All this will lead to the fact that our country will be forced to respond using more powerful and destructive weapons to protect its citizens," Volodin said.

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration was "working that out now" when asked if the U.S. would lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of long range weapons in the war.

Sources told Reuters last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine such weapons, but that Kyiv would need to wait several months as the US works through technical issues ahead of any shipment.

S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in what he said was a "dramatic escalation". Tehran said the claims were "ugly propaganda".

The West and Ukraine describe the invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Putin and has vowed to defeat Russia on the battlefield.