US officials insist that there is no indication that the White House will change its position on the ban on deep strikes against Russia with US weapons. This is stated in an article by The Washington Post, reports Komersant ukrainskyi
Although the debate on this issue continues, the US presidential administration is almost offended by the Ukrainians because they do not appreciate the cautious approach of the Americans. After all, they provide Kyiv with much more security assistance than anyone else.
At Zelenskyy’s meeting with Biden this week, the Ukrainian delegation’s priority is to present its “victory plan” as an opportunity for Biden to leave office with a legacy of key assistance to Ukraine in its victorious war against Russia. An important aspect of this plan is the ability to strike at the Russians on their own territory.
For example, Ukraine wants to hit Russian planes that are launching bombs and missiles at it while they are still at airfields in Russia. But they are not allowed to be hit with Western weapons.
“We believe that permission should have been granted yesterday, not today or tomorrow. Otherwise, the phrase ‘We want to see Ukraine as strong as possible for any scenario’ looks like complete nonsense,”
– said one Ukrainian official.
Ukrainians also want more freedom to target their own targets, including energy infrastructure such as oil storage facilities. Such strikes could hurt Russia’s economy by limiting its ability to finance the war effort, a senior Ukrainian military official explained. This is fair game, he added, as Moscow has been bombing Ukraine’s power grid for the past two years, causing intermittent blackouts across the country.
U.S. officials have responded by arguing that Ukraine has such a limited supply of ATACMS and similar munitions that opening Russian territory to strikes would have only a limited impact on the battlefield and could result in running out of missiles in weeks or even days. For some reason, the option of increasing the number of these missiles is not being considered.
White House and Department of Defence officials say they have never heard a convincing argument from Ukrainian leaders that possible targets within missile range in Russia would make a significant difference to Ukraine’s path to victory. They say that using missiles against targets in Crimea, as Ukraine has done so far, is a more worthwhile strategy that has already forced the Kremlin to withdraw from the peninsula.
One US official argued that this request is different from previous ones because it is not worth the risk of Russian escalation. With a limited missile stockpile and Russia already having 90 per cent of its cruise missile launchers out of range of ATACMS, a change in US policy would not change the course of the fighting.
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But European military officials and diplomats strongly disagree.
“On a technical and strategic level, it makes no sense. It’s really stupid,”
– said one Western military official, adding that NATO’s own military doctrine calls for deep strikes behind enemy lines.
While allowing the US to launch deeper missile strikes against Russia would not in itself be enough to win a war, it would help disrupt Russian logistics, hitting command centres and weapons depots, the official said. In addition, the longer it takes to get permission, the less effective long-range strikes will ultimately be.
Ukrainian and European officials said they have already observed that the Russians are making less use of the airfields closest to the Ukrainian border. Military aircraft now use these landing strips only for short refuelling or maintenance stops.
“There is no doubt that if a decision is made now to allow this, some of the advantage has already been lost because of this timidity,”
– said Keir Giles, an analyst at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
One Ukrainian official suggested that the new American argument that cross-border strikes are not effective probably arose “because the previous justification no longer works.”
A European diplomat in Kyiv said they believe Ukraine carried out its recent raid into Russia’s Kursk region in part to make a statement to the West that Putin’s red lines can be crossed without fear of major retaliation, such as the use of nuclear weapons.
But Russia can still escalate elsewhere in ways that make life difficult for the Biden administration on the world stage, U.S. officials said in response, such as arming the Houthi group in Yemen that threatens Red Sea shipping traffic, or transferring nuclear knowledge to Iran, or stepping up its campaign of sabotage attacks in Europe.
However, there are divisions within the administration: even after Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear his strong opposition to relaxing the rules on ATACMS strikes, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken indicated this month during a visit to Kyiv that he was open to Ukrainian arguments and would eventually bring them to Biden for a broader discussion in Washington.