South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Kyiv presses for aid to exploit gains
But Biden resisting request to provide long-range missiles
WASHINGTON — Flush with success in northeast Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pressing President Joe Biden for a new and more powerful weapon: a missile system with a range of 190 miles, which could reach far into Russian territory.
Zelenskyy insists to U.S. officials that he has no intention of striking Russian cities or aiming at civilian targets, even though President Vladimir Putin’s forces have hit apartment blocks, theaters and hospitals in Ukraine throughout the war. The weapon, Zelenskyy says, is critical to launching a wider counteroffensive, perhaps early next year.
Biden is resisting, in part because he is convinced that over the past seven months, he has successfully signaled to Putin that he does not want a broader war with the Russians — he just wants them to get out of Ukraine.
A shipment of long-range guided missiles, which could also give Ukraine new options for striking Crimea, the territory Russia annexed in 2014, would likely be seen by Moscow as a major provocation, Biden has concluded.
“We’re trying to avoid World War III,” Biden often reminds his aides, echoing a statement he has made publicly as well.
The argument over the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, comes at a critical moment, when officials in the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies appear more concerned than ever that Putin could escalate the war to compensate for his humiliating retreat.
They do not know what form that escalation might take. But many of the options they are preparing for are bleak: more indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities, a campaign to kill senior Ukrainian leaders or an attack on supply hubs outside Ukraine — located in NATO countries like Poland and Romania — that are channeling extraordinary quantities of arms, ammunition and military equipment into the country.
This account of the administration’s effort to control escalation in the war is based on conversations with more than a dozen senior U.S. officials as they struggle to calibrate the next steps — hoping to build on Ukraine’s advances without
triggering a wider conflict. It comes as the Ukrainians have gained momentum and the Russians, for now, are still in disarray.
U.S. officials believe they have, so far, succeeded at “boiling the frog” — increasing their military, intelligence and economic assistance to Ukraine step by step, without provoking Moscow into large-scale retaliation with any major single move.
They say that Putin almost certainly would have pushed back hard if Washington had, at the outset of the war, provided Ukraine with the kind of support it is getting now, such as intelligence that has allowed Ukraine to kill Russian generals and target arms
depots, tanks and Russian air defenses with precision-guided rocket attacks. Instead, the Americans believe their incremental strategy, and refusal to give Ukraine advanced weapons or aircraft that could reach deep into Russia, has put guardrails on the conflict.
But Putin has grown increasingly frustrated as his military struggles.
“We are, indeed, responding rather restrainedly, but that’s for the time being,” Putin said Friday after attending a regional summit in Uzbekistan. “If the situation continues to develop in this way, the answer will be more serious.”
He claimed that Ukraine was trying to carry out “terrorist acts” in Russia, and described recent Russian cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure as “warning strikes.”
Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a statement to The New York Times on Friday that “Ukraine’s success on the battlefield could cause Russia to feel backed into a corner, and that is something we must remain mindful of.”
But he said that while the United States is committed to providing Ukraine with the equipment it needs to counter Russian aggression, the Pentagon has assessed that Ukraine does not need the ATACMS for “targets that are directly relevant to the current fight.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats
and Republicans have expressed support for preventing the war in Ukraine from spilling into a wider conflict. But many lawmakers said the Biden administration was being overly cautious in denying Ukraine additional advanced weaponry.
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., who serves on the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said the United States should send ATACMS to Ukraine.
“Sure, escalation remains a concern, and we have to be mindful of that threat,” said Crow, a former Army Ranger. “But I don’t think providing ATACMS is substantively escalatory. We need to provide what Ukraine needs to win.”