Steve Holland, Humeyra Pamuk and Phil Stewart – Reuters May 31, 2024
ATACMS launch
President Joe Biden has quietly authorized Kyiv to launch U.S.-supplied weapons at military targets inside Russia that are supporting an offensive against the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, four U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The decision marks a policy shift by Biden, who had steadfastly refused to allow Ukraine to use American weaponry for strikes inside Russia.
Russia’s embassy in Washington and Russia’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s decision applies only to targets inside Russia near the border with the Kharkiv region, where an offensive launched by Moscow on May 10 has overrun some villages.
“The President recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S.-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” said one U.S. official.
Russia is building up forces near the northern part of the region, but it lacks the troop numbers to stage a major push, Ukraine’s top commander said on Thursday.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, is 19 miles (30 km) from the border with Russia.
It is the second time this year that Biden has quietly relaxed his policy on weapons supplies for Ukraine, bending to calls to send long-range missiles known as ATACMS to Kyiv.
“The Biden administration has come a long way from their hypersensitivity to and misunderstanding of the risk of escalation,” said Alexander Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former director for European affairs at the White House National Security Council under the Trump administration.
He applauded the shift in Biden’s policy, which he said “unties Ukraine’s hands.”
“Of course it’s the right move,” Vindman said.
The U.S. is the biggest supplier of weapons to Ukraine in its battle against the full-scale invasion launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022.
The officials said that U.S. policy would continue to prohibit the Ukrainian military from using ATACMS, which have a range of up to 186 miles (300 km), and other long-range U.S.-supplied weapons for deep strikes inside Russia.
Biden’s decision also does not mean the U.S. now approves of drone attacks that Ukraine has been launching against Russian petroleum facilities, they said.
Some NATO allies and U.S. lawmakers have been calling on Biden to relax the restriction on U.S. weapons to allow Ukraine to strike missile launchers and other military sites inside Russia that are backing Moscow’s drive toward Kharkiv.
Russia jetfighters flying inside Russia out of reach of Ukrainian air defenses have been supporting the offensive by loosing highly precise glide bombs at Ukrainian defense lines and into Kharkiv, where they have caused numerous civilian casualties.
Putin on Tuesday warned NATO members against allowing Ukraine to fire their weapons into Russia and he raised anew a risk of nuclear war.
Some experts dismissed his remarks as bluster. They noted that Putin has failed to act on similar threats in the past and already has committed the bulk of his conventional forces to Europe’s biggest land war since World War Two.
“I don’t think we can or should be bullied by Vladimir Putin,” said U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. “Is he really willing to risk nuclear war and a conflict with NATO?”
Connolly co-signed a May 20 letter with Representative Michael Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other lawmakers urging the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to hit strategic targets inside Russia.
For some time, critics have urged NATO allies to relax restrictions on use of their weapons against military targets inside Russia. Those voices have grown within the alliance since Russia launched the Kharkiv offensive.
Countries that have called for relaxing restrictions or done so for their own arms sent to Ukraine include Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Baltic states, Finland, Denmark, Germany and France.
Biden faced the potentially embarrassing prospect that as he hosts a NATO summit in July, Russian forces would be advancing on Kharkiv and in Ukraine’s east as the alliance marks its 75th anniversary, analysts said.
moscow is right
i was a cold war expert this is not that same communist russia
christianity and islam arre now allowed to flourish
the comuniost jews who murdered milions have gone
The UK is more comuinist now than Russia
with migarnts allowed to rape and in some caes kill under age white christian girls in the rochdale area
” white lives matter” has not been heard in the new communist UK
Correction. Biden allows CENTCOM and US forces/contractors/special forces to use US/NATO weapons to strike deep into Russia.
Skip this UKraine lark, skip this proxy bollox. This is the Nazis jabbing the bear.
I’ve been saying for well over a year that it’s going nuclear, and here we are, literally in the eye of the storm.
At any time, Russia will hit a target, or targets in NATO. It could be anywhere, from Romania, Poland, or France, but the leading target by far, is Nazi UK. Putin didn’t name the UK, but it is a small densely populated country, and the Russians know the UK is behind most, if not all the international terror attacks, and most attacks inside Russia. This is why we are going to be the No1 tactical nuke[s] target.
Don’t be fooled by Lordy David Pecker Pigs Head Cameron’s lies, when he says ‘UKraine has the right’. It’s not UKraine, it’s the SAS, and MI6. Just because there’s a few UKrainian Nazis polishing boots, buttons and knobs, doesn’t mean they are launching these weapons.
If the idiot neo-cons had had any sense never mind courage, and they’d been upfront about taking out Russia, they could now have an extra half a million living Ukrainians and several hundred billion dollars of NATO weapons with which to try it–on top of NATO’s other armies. But no, they thought if they just print enough money to buy western weapons Ukraine will wear down Russia to the point where the US can ride in and deliver the coups de grâce to a dying superpower.
I think being able to print the reserve currency is the whole key to this misadventure. Such failures can only happen when the inferior think they’re superior and actively promote incompetents too timid to tell them you’re a f**king moron.
@CJ
Those Deagel numbers – which project an 80% “reduction” of Brits by 2025 – would appear to confirm your assessment of ZOGUK being “the leading target by far” for a Russian ‘Coup De Nuke’… in the not-too-distant future…🤔
like ZIOUS/UK likes to poke the bear in europa
Putin should start provoking Alaska from Siberia !