Ukraine: escalation?
By Richard North - November 18, 2024
Newspapers, doubtless globally, are full of the news that Biden has relaxed the restrictions on the use of American-supplied long-range weapons by Ukraine, enabling them to be used against targets inside Russia.
Initial details are covered by Reuters – dateline Washington – with the agency attributing the source of the information to two US officials and “a source familiar with the decision”.
These sources tell us that this is a significant reversal of Washington’s policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and say that Ukraine plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days, although no details were disclosed “due to operational security concerns”.
What is not clear from the agency report is the route of the information and the manner of its disclosure, but we actually get this from the Telegraph via its chief political correspondent, Nick Gutteridge, who happens to be in Rio de Janeiro, covering Biden’s visit to the Amazon and, most likely, the G20 summit which is to be held in the city.
From Gutteridge’s piece, we learn a remarkable thing about the announcement, although he doesn’t make a big deal of it. And that is that it didn’t come from Biden himself, or even formally via the president’s spokesperson. Rather, it was passed by the anonymous “US officials” directly to the New York Times which published the news at about 9pm yesterday evening (GMT).
The headline offered by the paper states: “Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range US Missiles”, with the sub-heading conveying the all-important detail that, “With two months left in office, the president for the first time authorised the Ukrainian military to use the system known as ATACMS to help defend its forces in the Kursk region of Russia”.
We are told in the text that the officials had said that allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, had come in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight.
In further background information, the paper tells us that president Biden began to ease restrictions on the use of US-supplied weapons on Russian soil after Russia launched a cross-border assault in May in the direction of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
To help the Ukrainians defend Kharkiv, Biden allowed them to use the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which has a range of about 50 miles, against Russian forces directly across the border. But he did not allow the Ukrainians to use longer-range ATACMS, which has a range of about 190 miles, in defence of Kharkiv.
But not only was Biden persuaded to make the current change by the “sheer audacity” of Russia’s decision to throw North Korean troops at Ukrainian lines. He was also swayed, officials say, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.
Turning to the Telegraph out of interest, to see what Gutteridge has to say, one has to appreciate that, from his none-too-strategic position in Rio de Janeiro, he knows no more of the detail than anyone who has been able to read the NYT report.
All he can do, therefore, is confirm that the US president has signed off on the use of ATACMS within the Kursk region, then adding a UK dimension, noting that the decision will raise expectations that he is also set to drop his opposition to the use of British-made Storm Shadow missiles within Russia.
To get a more complete picture of the UK “take”, we can also look at The Times which is running the story under the headline “Biden authorises Ukraine to use long-range missiles inside Russia”.
In a rare nod to the bigger picture, the paper also acknowledges that Russia appears to be seizing the upper hand on the ground in Ukraine, making advances into the east of the country as it looks to take key towns and roads. It adds that Sunday saw one of the biggest Russian aerial assaults on the country since President Putin ordered the invasion in February 2022, with the energy infrastructure as the chief target.
Commenting on the move to authorise the use of the long-range weapons, the paper says that this demonstrates Biden’s continued ability to influence the course of the war, two months before Donald Trump takes up office. It avers that the move will anger the Kremlin, which has promised in the past to retaliate if such an authorisation was given.
It has certainly angered Richard Grenell, Trump’s former director of national intelligence and one of his closest foreign policy advisers. He accuses Biden of “escalating the wars before he leaves office”.
Posting on Twitter – where much of the important news appears, these days – he writes: “No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period (his capitals). This, he adds, is as if he is launching a whole new war. Everything has changed now – all previous calculations are null and void. And all for politics”.
Grenell, who is expected to hold a post in the new Trump administration, may be shouting too loud and too soon. One of the original reasons why the US was reluctant to send ATACMS to the Ukrainians was because its Army only had limited stocks of the missiles.
Once they were released to the Ukrainians in October 2023, the AFU very quickly exhausted its supply, with a report in September of this year that nearly all the missiles provided by the US had been used.
Not for nothing, therefore, is the NYT conveying the news that US officials do not believe that Biden’s decision will change the course of the war. The number of missiles which can be sent to Ukraine will probably be quite small and while they will be able cause some damage, they are unlikely to have any strategic effect.
This is further reinforced by the Washington Post which states that Biden has only authorised “limited use”, although their use “could expand” at some time in the future. At the moment, though, the approval “is going to have a very specific and limited effect” on the battlefield, designed to limit concerns about escalation, the paper says.
Although senior US officials have repeatedly expressed private concern that Russia could retaliate by escalating inside Ukraine and around the world, denying Kyiv’s pleas to be able to fire ATACMS inside Russia, administration officials have publicly said that the use of the weapon would have marginal utility on the battlefield.
Pentagon officials, who have been by far the most sceptical voice inside the administration, have argued that the benefits of allowing strikes in Russia would be limited because the Kremlin, anticipating a potential easing of the restraint, earlier this year pulled most of its warplanes and other assets deeper into Russia and out of range of these weapons.
On the face of it, therefore, the removal of some of the restrictions on the use of these weapons does not amount to a major escalation and is quite possible the Russian response would be limited to targeting the launchers and interdicting the supply lines and rear storage depots – as it has done when the missiles were first introduced.
So far, the Russians seem fairly laid back, with the official news agency TASS merely observing that “Trump may review Biden’s decision on strikes inside Russia with US missiles”.
Should Biden go further, though, and lift restrictions on the use of Storm Shadow – and the French SCALP version – the response could be very different. Unlike the supersonic ATACMS, which is nuclear capable but with a limited warhead, the Storm Shadow/SCALP with more than twice the warhead weight, is a far more potent weapon.
Potentially posing a much greater threat, Putin could react quite sharply if the targeting restrictions were lifted, although with a range of around 150 miles and subsonic speeds, it may be easier to intercept – with a recent example of a cruise missile being brought down with a MANPAD.
Pitching into the debate, though, is the BBC which, in its own ponderous way, agrees that the supply (sic) of ATACMS will probably not be enough to turn the tide of the war.
It cites an anonymous Western diplomat saying: “I don’t think it will be decisive”, adding that “it’s an overdue symbolic decision to raise the stakes and demonstrate military support to Ukraine”. It can, the diplomat observed, “raise the war cost for Russia”.
With the Russians having launched a furious offensive against the Ukrainian salient in the Kursk oblast, forcing the AFU to deplete its forces on the Donbass front in order to reinforce positions threatened with encirclement, the Ukrainians may find that time is running out faster than their supply of missiles.
If that is the case – the fight being very much in the melting pot – this latest piece of news may end up being seen as Biden’s last throw, and of very little value in a war which is close to lasting 1000 days.
