What happened
President Joe Biden lifted restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia under certain circumstances, U.S. officials told multiple news organizations Sunday. The reversal in policy, after months of lobbying by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will initially allow Kyiv to fire Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rockets at 50,000 Russian and North Korean troops amassing to recapture Russia’s Kursk province from Ukraine.
Who said what
Biden’s “major change in U.S. policy” was prompted by “Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight,” which the U.S. sees as a major escalation, The New York Times said. Allowing the use of ATACMS “deep inside Russia” probably won’t “fundamentally alter the course of the war,” but it could “help the Ukrainians blunt the effectiveness of the Russian-North Korean assault” and “send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them.”
Despite the media reports of the ATACMS shift, “blows are not inflicted with words,” Zelenskyy said Sunday night. “Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves.” Ukraine “plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days,” Reuters said.
President Vladimir Putin warned in September that Western rockets hitting Russia would “substantially change the very essence” of the conflict, and senior Russian lawmaker Vladimir Dzhabarov called Sunday’s U.S. shift “a very big step towards the start of World War III.” But Russia has “set out ‘red lines’ before,” the BBC said, and many were “crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and NATO.”
U.S. officials noted that the damage from Kyiv’s “significant new tool” will be constrained by Ukraine’s “very limited stocks of ATACMS,” The Washington Post said. But France and Britain quickly followed suit, allowing Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with their similar SCALP/Storm Shadow long-range missiles, Le Figaro said.
What next?
Biden’s ATACMS shift, made Thursday, appeared to be part of his team’s “push to give what it can to Ukraine” before Donald Trump takes office, The Wall Street Journal said. Trump has said he wants to negotiate some end to the war, and Ukraine and Russia both view Kursk as one of Ukraine’s biggest bargaining chips in those talks.