In a major change, President Joe Biden has lifted a ban on Ukraine using U.S. long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia, according to reports.
Ukraine could carry out the first strikes using ATACMS, U.S.-provided long-range missiles, in the coming days, three sources told Reuters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some in Washington have long pushed for the U.S. to greenlight the long-range strikes amid past concern the move would involve the U.S. more directly and escalate the 999-day-old invasion.
Although the White House has yet to officially announce the policy change, Deputy National Security advisor Jon Finer cited the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to join Russia’s forces in the war, calling it “a significant Russian escalation that involves the deployment of a foreign country’s forces on its own territory.”
“The United States has been clear that we would respond to that. We’ve been clear to the Russians that we would respond to that,” Finer said Monday.
Its hesitation stemmed from fears that allowing Ukraine to carry out the strikes would involve the U.S. more directly in the conflict and provoke a harsh response from Putin, who has long threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the conflict.
The Ukrainian military needs Pentagon assistance to launch ATACMS at their longest range. Putin has said that would amount to direct U.S. involvement in the war.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that if the missiles are used to strike targets “deep” inside Russia then it could lead to a sea-change in relations with the West, state media reported.
In September, amid mounting speculationthe U.S. was mulling a policy change, Putin said it would constitute the “direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine.”
This would, Putin cautioned, drastically alter the nature of the conflict, and Russia would be forced to take “appropriate measures” in response. Putin did not specify what those measures would be.
In October, Putin changed Russia’s nuclear doctrine, saying Russia’s defense ministry would offer a “range of responses” if NATO policies on long-range strikes changed.
What are ATACMS?
ATACMS − Army Tactical Missile Systems – are Lockheed Martin-manufactured missiles with a range of up to 190 miles. In July, the Army awarded Lockheed Martin a $226 million contract to produce the missile systems.
ATACMS are already in the hands of Ukraine’s military, which the U.S. has allowed to strike targets inside Russia close to the border.
What’s at stake
Military experts and officials say Ukraine’s use of the powerful long-range U.S. weapons may enable Kyiv to damage military targets including supply lines, troop and weapons systems far from its border. It is not clear whether Ukraine’s use of ATCAMS would fundamentally alter the course of the war.
“A decision of some importance has been made, but we are still a long way from knowing just how important it will be,” Phillips O’Brien, an American military historian at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, wrote in his Ukraine-focused newsletter Sunday night.
Ukraine could use the missiles to hit Russian bases farther from the Ukrainian border that Russia relies on to launch airstrikes and ground attacks. Up to now, Ukraine has lacked the tools to strike those bases, Fred Kagan, a senior fellow and director of the critical threats project at the American Enterprise Institute, previously told USA TODAY.
“The more that the Ukrainians are able to strike these perfectly legitimate military targets that the Russians are using to attack Ukraine, the more countermeasures the Russians have to take that reduce the effectiveness of Russian military action,” he said.
Kagan cited a Ukrainian strike on a Russian arsenal around 240 miles from the border in September that demolished several months’ worth of ammunition.
Allowing the strikes could “really matter” if it signals the start of a “general expansion of targeting, allowing the Ukrainians to hit many military targets in Russia,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien added Biden’s move would be a “damp squib, short term decision” if Kyiv is only permitted to strike targets “just around Kursk” – a region Ukraine occupied over the summer – has a limited supply of ATACMS and President-elect Donald Trump eventually reverses course.
“It will help now around Kursk, but that’s about it,” he said.