WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine daring ground offensive has taken the fight to Russia, but not nearly as intensively as the country’s leadership would have liked because, in their opinion, the United States would not allow it.
The United States is restricting the use of long-range missiles that it supplies to Ukraine, which plans to use them against military targets inside Russia. The Ukrainian offensive, together with a Barrage of drones and missiles The “terror bombing war” launched by Moscow this week has increased pressure on the Biden administration to relax its cautious approach to using Western weapons as Ukrainian attacks escalate.
The Biden administration says its careful consideration, including what advanced weapons it supplies to Ukraine and when, is necessary to avoid retaliation from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some analysts agree that Putin would view a Ukrainian attack by an American long-range missile inside Russia as an attack by the United States itself.
But many other American and European supporters of Ukraine say the White House should recognize that Putin’s threats to attack the West, including with nuclear weapons, are just grandstanding. They fear that the U.S. support that has enabled Ukraine to withstand the Russian invasion in 2022 has come with delays and reservations that could ultimately contribute to its defeat.
“This war will end exactly as Western politicians decide,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. general who led NATO in Europe from 2013 to 2016 and is among retired U.S. military leaders and diplomats, Republican lawmakers, security analysts and others who are pushing for easing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons.
“If we continue as we are, Ukraine will ultimately lose,” Breedlove said. “Because right now we are deliberately not giving Ukraine what it needs to win.”
Lifting such restrictions “would strengthen Ukrainian self-defence, save lives and reduce destruction in Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on social media platform X on Monday after Russia fired more than 200 missiles and drones at Ukraine. The next day, Russia launched 91 more.
The back and forth takes place during Ukraine’s surprise offensive in Russia’s southern Kursk region, Russia’s first ground invasion since World War II.
Through the warUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has balanced his effusive thanks for U.S. support with frustrated appeals for more weapons and ammunition. This month he upped the pressure by again saying Ukraine must fight the war as it sees fit, with all the weapons at its disposal, and appealing to the U.S. to lift a ban on using American long-range ATACMS-class missiles for strikes deeper inside Russia.
“A sick old man from Red Square, who constantly threatens everyone with the red button, will not dictate his red lines to us,” Zelensky recently said of Putin.
The Biden administration this year allowed Ukraine to fire shorter-range munitions from the United States across the border for self-defense, but not ATACMS.
Security analysts say Ukraine is using US-supplied HIMARS missile systems in its offensive. Ukraine also announced that it has used a US-supplied glide bomb against Russian forces and your own prototype a long-range drone-missile hybrid.
It appears that Zelensky’s military launched the ground offensive on August 6 without consulting the American leadership.
By claiming nearly 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometers) of Russian territory, Ukraine has received a message from another U.S. ally that is receiving military support, said Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian politician and military commander.
“Israel once said that it respects the advice of its partners, but as an independent state it makes its decisions independently,” Kostenko told the news channel Ukrainska Pravda. “I think we can emulate that.”
The United States deliberated for a long time before finally approving a range of sophisticated weapons that Ukraine had requested: modern tanks, medium-range precision missile systems, Patriot missile batteries, ATACMS for use in occupied Ukrainian territory, and F-16 aircraft.
The Biden administration condemned Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this week and is helping to bolster its ally’s air defenses, but has not changed its policy on long-range weapons, national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters this week.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity about the administration’s internal discussions said the Biden administration is convinced that ATACMS attacks inside Russia do not provide a strategic advantage.
Overall, there are too few ATACMS to enable Ukraine to attack a significant number of targets in Russia, the official said, adding that Ukraine is using the long-range missiles at its disposal to challenge Russia’s control over the strategically important Crimean peninsula.
Russia has also moved many of its aircraft away from 16 Russian air bases that the Institute for the Study of War research group says are within range of the ATACMS. That includes planes that drop the hard-to-intercept glide bombs that Russia uses in Ukraine, the official said.
Many outside the government disagree. More than 200 other Russian military targets lie within range of ATACMS in apparently laxly guarded areas along the 1,000-kilometer border, says George Barros, a security analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who focuses on Ukraine and Russia and provides some of the most closely watched battlefield analysis of the conflict.
According to Barros, these targets included major military bases, communications stations, logistics centers, repair facilities, fuel depots, ammunition depots and permanent headquarters.
While tech-savvy Ukraine is testing new ways to aggressively use armed drones and electronic warfare against Russia, hardened targets such as military bases need the greater power that ATACMS can provide, Barros said.
A few targeted attacks on Russian targets would force Putin to divert personnel and resources to protect those targets, he said.
“This is the kind of strain that drastically reduces an attacker’s ability to successfully support its frontline troops logistically,” Barros said.
Ukraine, fighting a far larger force, needs the battlefield dynamism it hopes to achieve through surprise offensives, demoralizing attacks inside Russia, and modern weaponry. While it pulled off a feat of using armed and unmanned drone boats to encircle the Russian Navy in the Black Sea, its greatest battlefield successes came in the dramatic first months of the war.
A Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 ended without major successes. Then a political stalemate in the United States led to a months-long stalemate in military support, allowing Russian forces to gain territory.
In somber talks this summer, Ukrainians and Americans spoke about the risk of Ceasefire on Russia’s termsWithout the leverage of its battlefield successes, Ukraine may be forced to cede large parts of its territory and face another invasion later.
Billions of dollars in US military aid are flowing again. Zelensky has expanded conscription. And American military leaders are again talking about the allies’ vision for the next phase of the war, says Bill Taylor, a veteran former diplomat who served as US ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.
This means that Ukraine will spend the rest of the year rebuilding its ground forces and increasing its striking power to hit Russia hard enough to force it to seek a ceasefire next year on terms acceptable to Ukraine, he said.
According to Taylor, this also includes attacks with long-range missiles on military targets throughout Russia. “The Ukrainians should not have to offer the Russians a safe haven.”
