US embassy in Kyiv to reopen after threat of attack

The United States Embassy in Kyiv will reopen Thursday after closing due to the threat of an air attack, the State Department said.

Spokesman Matthew Miller declined to say what kind of threat had forced the embassy to shut down on Wednesday as a safety precaution.

“We take the safety and security of our personnel… extremely seriously,” Miller said.

The US mission had closed a day after Moscow vowed to respond to Ukraine’s firing of long-range US-supplied missiles at Russian territory for the first time in the nearly three-year war.

“The US Embassy in Kyiv has received specific information of a potential significant air attack on November 20,” the embassy had said on its website.

A senior Ukrainian official said that a strike on Russia’s Bryansk region on Tuesday “was carried out by ATACMS missiles” — a reference to the US-supplied Army Tactical Missile System.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the attack showed Ukraine’s allies wanted to escalate the conflict.

“We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly,” Lavrov told a press conference at the G20 summit in Brazil.

Washington this week said it had cleared Ukraine to use ATACMS against military targets inside Russia — a long-standing Ukrainian request.