Biden tiptoes deeper into Ukraine conflict with arms decision

WASHINGTON/KYIV – US President Joe Biden’s decision to relax some restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US weaponry inside Russia is a small but significant step deeper into the two-year-old war that experts say could help blunt Russia’s cross-border Kharkiv offensive.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine,

Mr Biden’s administration had argued it was too risky to allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. It feared a major Ukrainian attack could trigger direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia.

It was a rule that fitted neatly with other US prohibitions on supplying higher-end weaponry to Kyiv that have also since crumbled, from advanced US fighter jets to long-range ATACMS missiles.

Biden administration officials say

the latest decision, which went into effect on May 30,

was narrowly tailored to the battle in the Kharkiv region. US officials say it allows Kyiv to use US-supplied weapons to fire back against Russian forces “attacking them or preparing to attack them” from across the border.

That gives Ukrainians on the front lines a green light to fire over the border at Russian forces using US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers armed with Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles, and other weaponry, experts say.

“This can stabilise the front line and possibly create conditions to push back (Russians) from Kharkiv region before they have dug in,” said Mr Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, an official think-tank in Kyiv.

Mr Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence officer, said Mr Biden’s decision will reduce Kyiv’s need to draw troops away from critical battle fronts in the eastern Donbas region.

“The Russians are now going to find themselves on the back foot and will have to rethink the tactics they have been using in their attack into Kharkiv,” he said.

Slow-churn decision

Mr Biden’s decision-making process dates back weeks.

Ukraine raised its request to use US weapons across the border in the Kharkiv region during a secure videoconference on May 13 with White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, and General C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mr Sullivan, Mr Austin and Gen Brown developed a recommendation in favour of relaxing the restrictions, which Mr Sullivan took to Mr Biden on May 15. Mr Biden agreed Ukraine should be able to strike back against Russian forces attacking them from the safety of Russian soil, the official said. Mr Biden’s administration had been finalising the decision since then.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly called for Ukraine’s partners to take such a step in a May 20 interview with Reuters, but at the time said: “So far, there is nothing positive.”

Mr Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Programme, said Russia had been exploiting Mr Biden’s prohibition on strikes inside Russian territory by using it as a safe haven to launch attacks in the Kharkiv region.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is just 30km from the border.

“Russia could keep its artillery right across the border. It could keep air defence, electronic warfare, command and control (there),” Mr Lee said. “It had maybe a degree of (a) kind of sanctuary.”

Still, Mr Lee and other experts say this decision on its own may not alter the front lines any time soon.

“I don’t think (the decision) is going to change the movement of the front line that much, if at all. But it will make it more difficult for Russia to continue this kind of cross-border operation,” Mr Lee said.

Mr Ingram said Russia lacks enough troops for a major push into Kharkiv.

“The Russians don’t have the ability to generate sufficient combat capability to properly threaten Kharkiv from the north-east,” he said. “To do that, it would denude their troops in eastern combat areas.”

Deeper strikes in Russia?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Nato members against allowing Ukraine to fire their weapons into Russia and on May 28 once again raised the risk of nuclear war.

Still, Ukraine appears ready to seek to expand its ability to use US weaponry elsewhere in Russia in the weeks and months to come, particularly after a difficult year in which Russia seized the momentum on the battlefield.

On May 31, less than a day after Washington announced its policy shift, Mr Zelensky was quoted in an interview with The Guardian newspaper calling for US approval to hit targets deep inside Russian territory.

Mr Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington, said Mr Biden’s move was just a first step.

“It’s not a radical departure (in policy). But it’s a step,” Mr Cancian said.

“Ukrainians and officials in the administration will argue for the next step: to strike a broader set of targets – maybe targets in Russia that are not directly threatening Kharkiv, but are in other areas.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on May 31 in Prague, declined to say whether the Biden administration could expand its policy to allow strikes elsewhere in Russia. But he did not rule it out.

“Going forward, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is as necessary adapt and adjust,” Mr Blinken said. REUTERS