Pentagon confirms Ukrainian missiles attacked Moskva warship as Russians

Ukrainian satisfaction at Thursday’s successful sinking of the Moskva, a guided missile cruiser, was tempered by the situation in Mariupol, and a Russian warning that it would step up strikes on Ukraine’s capital. Blasts were reported outside Kyiv on Friday, with Russian forces saying in a statement that they fired missiles on a suburban factory that produces Ukrainian defense weapons, in retaliation for what it claimed were attempted Ukrainian assaults on border towns inside Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continued to press Western leaders to increase their efforts to isolate Russia. In a recent phone call with President Biden, Zelensky made a direct appeal for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal, The Washington Post first reported.

While Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart that he was willing to explore a range of proposals to exert greater pressure on Moscow, he did not commit to specific actions, according to people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dialogue between the two leaders.

Even during the Cold War, Washington refrained from designating the Soviet Union in this manner, despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorist actors throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Such a measure could have a range of effects, including the imposition of economic penalties on dozens of other nations that continue to do business with Russia; the freezing of Moscow’s assets in the United States, including real estate; and the prohibition of a variety of dual-use exports.

The label, which requires a finding by the secretary of state, can be applied to any country that has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to a State Department fact sheet. The list names four countries: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria.

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked directly about U.S. support for the designation at a news conference last month, he said, “We are and we will look at everything.”

“Our focus first and foremost is on doing everything we can to help bring this war to a quick end, to stop the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” Blinken told reporters at the State Department.

The destruction of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet by homegrown Ukrainian weapons represented a deeply symbolic victory for Ukraine, and a significant blow to Russia’s naval capacity.

The sinking removed a vessel that Moscow will be unable to replace in the Ukraine theater, according to the U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon. Russia has two other similar ships in its navy, but neither is based in the…