The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine on Friday of using US-supplied HIMARS missiles to target civilian areas in Russia's Belgorod region, killing women and children.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said during a news conference on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that fragments of the HIMARS rockets would provide direct proof of the incident, which she claimed implicates the United States in the attack.

"The decision by the US to supply Kiev with long-range weapons has made them complicit in the deaths of women and children in Belgorod," Zakharova underlined, adding that the use of such sophisticated weaponry by Ukraine would be impossible without the presence of Western instructors on the ground.

The deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament's Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence, Yeho Chernev, reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces carried out strikes up to 20 miles (32 km) into Russia. He added that Ukraine's forces used HIMARS. 

Moscow could arm other countries with similar weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday lambasted the West's delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine, hinting that Moscow could arm other countries with similar weapons to attack Western targets.

The announcement came after several Western countries, including the United States, gave Ukraine the green light to strike targets inside Russia, a move Moscow has called a grave miscalculation.

Commenting on Putin's announcement, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, said this is a rather "significant change" in Moscow's foreign policy.

Referring to the United States and its allies, Medvedev explained that "the Yankees and their drooling dogs put it that way: we are entitled to provide any kind of weapons" to Ukraine "and all the other countries cannot help Russia." 

"Now, may the United States and its allies experience firsthand the direct use of Russian weapons by the third parties," he posted on his account on X.

The Russian official noted that these parties "have been intentionally left unnamed, but it can be all those who consider the Yankeeland & Co their enemy, regardless of their political outlook and international recognition."

Medvedev indicated that if these sides' enemy is the US, "to us they are friends."

"If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a warzone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don't we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those (Western) countries," Putin said on Wednesday.

"That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it," he told reporters.