Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range US weapons to strike inside Russia is long overdue. It is also almost certainly too little too late to change the course of the conflict.
The belated move finally reverses the absurd US-imposed restraint on Ukraine’s ability to fight Vladimir Putin’s forces.
The restraint on the use of the US-supplied Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, has meant Ukraine was fighting this war with one hand behind its back. While Moscow was free to fire missiles into apartments in the heart of Kyiv and elsewhere, Ukraine had to limit its strikes against Russian forces to the frontline.
The restriction was born out of timidity within the Biden administration, which feared that the Russian President would actually carry out his wild threats to retaliate aggressively if it allowed ATACMS to be fired into Russia.
Yet the lesson of the Ukraine war is that Putin regularly makes wild threats about so-called “red lines” regarding Western military aid to Ukraine, only to do nothing whenever those red lines are crossed.
Putin also huffed and puffed but did nothing when the US finally sent Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine and again when it gave it US-made Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.
The real-life effect of Biden’s excessive caution on Ukraine has meant the US has given Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky just enough military aid not to lose the war but not enough to win it.
Sadly, while the removal of restrictions on the use of the ATACMS will help Ukraine, it is unlikely to change the course of the war at this stage of the conflict when the frontline is all but frozen.
This is partly because this debate about the use of ATACMS has been so well flagged that Russia has moved many of its most valuable military assets, including its warplanes, out of range of the ATACMS.
Even the Pentagon has conceded that 90 per cent of the Russian aircraft launching glide bombs into Ukraine are now flying from airfields outside ATACMS range.
The ATACMS have a range of between 160km to 300km, meaning they can be fired well behind the Russian lines, disrupting the ability to replenish troops and supplies.
The Biden decision appears to have been sparked by the arrival of some 10,000 North Korean troops on the battlefield to help Russian forces.
Those troops, along with about 40,000 Russian soldiers, are amassing in the Kursk region ahead of a planned counter-offensive to win back the Russian territory that Ukrainian forces seized earlier this year.
The White House hopes the long-range ATACMS will complicate Russia’s chances of retaking the Kurtz region, which is the only Russian territory held by Ukraine.
If Ukraine can keep occupying at least some Russian territory, it will give Zelensky a much firmer hand in the negotiations likely to flow from the arrival of Donald Trump to the White House in January.
Trump has claimed he will solve the Ukraine conflict as soon as he becomes president and although he has not explained how, he is expected to pressure both sides to kickstart talks to reach a diplomatic settlement.
So the Biden administration knows negotiations are likely under Trump and it wants to strengthen Ukraine’s hand as much as possible before then.
It’s just a shame Biden left it so late to make this move. While it is better late than never, his excessive caution has hindered Ukraine’s war fighting ability.
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