Blinken hints US will lift restrictions on Ukraine using long-range arms in Russia
By: Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh (the Guardian)
The President who is no longer on the stair (the man who isn't there) can really expand the quagmire before being ushered out of the White House. We've witnessed the creeping involvement of the US with each new, improved weapon system supplied to Ukraine. and now Zelensky is making a push to tie the hands of the next President.
(BTW, Ukraine has been manufacturing its own long range weapons and has been striking deep inside Russia. Biden could provide support to expand Ukraine's manufacturing capability instead of giving them US advanced weapons. But that wouldn't satisfy Zelensky's desire to raid the US treasury. Yes, boys and girls, Ukraine's war strategy is as much about putting US taxpayers on the hook as it is about defeating Russia.)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private.
Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had "from day one" been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. "We will continue to do this," he emphasised.
Blinken said he and Lammy would report back to their "bosses" - Joe Biden and Keir Starmer - after their talks on Wednesday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The foreign secretary suggested Iran's dispatch of ballistic missiles to Moscow - revealed this week - had changed strategic thinking in London and Washington. It was a "significant and dangerous escalation", he said.
He added: "The escalator here is Putin. Putin has escalated with the shipment of missiles from Iran. We see a new axis of Russia, Iran and North Korea." Lammy urged China "not to throw in its lot" with what he called "a group of renegades".
British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.
The two leaders are planning to discuss the war in Ukraine, and how it could be ended, as part of a wide-ranging foreign policy discussion, though they will avoid an intense focus on any individual weapons system, as the aim of the conversation is strategic.
No press conference is scheduled during what is expected to be a short visit, Starmer's second to the US as prime minister, after which there may be further conversations over the weekend to update key European allies on the discussions.
Wednesday's joint visit to Kyiv by Blinken and Lammy to meet Zelenskiy would not be taking place had there been no positive decision regarding Storm Shadow, the sources added.
But it would be considered unnecessarily provocative to make a public announcement about long-range missiles in Kyiv. It is also likely there will still be restrictions around Ukraine's use of the missiles, which have a range of at least 190 miles, to avoid reckless or unnecessary attacks.
Speaking in Kyiv, Lammy said he would not reveal details of private discussions that might hand Putin an advantage. He denounced the Russian leader's "sinister" invasion of Ukraine and accused him personally of "arrogance and greed".
"This is imperialism. This is fascism," he said.
Ukraine has been lobbying for months for permission to hit airfields, missile launchers and command and control centres deep inside Russian territory. Speaking to the Guardian in May, Zelenskiy said Biden's equivocation and incremental approach had cost lives. It allowed the Kremlin to "hunt" Ukrainians, he complained.
Zelenskiy urged the president to overcome his perennial worries about nuclear escalation. The US should "believe in us more", he stressed, saying of Russia: "We have to respond. They don't understand anything but force."
Blinken and Lammy arrived in Kyiv on an overnight train from Poland. They had come to reiterate "ironclad support for Ukraine", Lammy posted on X. "We must stand up to Vladimir Putin's imperialism. Our collective security depends on it." Russia's attacks on civilians were "horrific, barbaric, unbelievable", he commented.
I am in Kyiv today with @SecBlinken to reiterate our united and ironclad support for Ukraine.
We must stand up to Vladimir Putin's imperialism.
Our collective security depends on it. pic.twitter.com/EQTMWDC1rH — David Lammy (@DavidLammy) September 11, 2024
The trip came 24 hours after Blinken confirmed in London that Tehran had shipped new deadly ballistic missiles to Russia. In Kyiv, Blinken said he was delivering a strong message that Britain and the US were committed to Ukraine's "success" and "victory".
Speaking at a joint press conference, Lammy described the UK's backing for Ukraine as an enduring "hundred-year partnership". He said the government was providing a new package of military assistance including Brimstone missiles and AS-90 self-propelled guns.
"We recognise what is at stake: not just the liberty of Ukraine but the security of Europe and the west," Lammy declared.
There was growing anticipation in Kyiv that the US and UK would finally lift their objections to long-range strikes. "Hoping to hear a long-awaited decision to allow us to hit Russia with Atacms," the MP Kira Rudik said. "Fingers crossed," Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine's former defence minister, remarked.
Asked if long-range weapons would make a difference, at a time when Russian troops were gaining towns and villages in the eastern Donbas region, he replied simply: "It is a big deal."
Ukrainian officials had previously expressed frustration that the new Labour government in the UK had not been more robust on the issue, and had waited for the White House to amend its red lines. The US state department has reportedly been open to Kyiv's request, with the Pentagon and some in the US intelligence community sceptical.
In May the US allowed weapons such as Himars artillery to be used within Russia's border regions for the first time. This followed a Kremlin offensive into the Kharkiv region and the Ukrainian city of Vovchansk.
This week senior Democrats and Republicans in Washington urged the White House to go further. In a letter, a group of senators called on Biden "to immediately end" his administration's "limitations" on the use of long-range missiles provided by the US and its Nato allies.
I am joining my Caucus co-chairs in calling on President Biden to lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range weapons. We need to remove the handcuffs and give Ukraine every advantage. pic.twitter.com/9EJ0GQ6TSt — Senator Roger Wicker (@SenatorWicker) September 10, 2024
Without this, Kyiv would "struggle to achieve victory" and suffer "death, loss and hardship" as Russia capitalised on the policy and continued to pound Ukraine, it said. "We need to remove the handcuffs and give Ukraine every advantage," the Republican senator Roger Wicker said.
The senators argued "sophisticated" western weapons would make a difference and force Russia to defend its "rear". They said delays by the White House in the provision of Abrams tanks, F-16s and other US weapons were "regrettable".
West's missile go-ahead to Ukraine would hold no shortage of risksRead more
Speaking in Germany last week, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said long-range strikes would not turn the tide of the war in Ukraine's favour. He said that Russia had already moved its glide bombs back beyond the range of the US Atacms long-range systems.
Austin said Kyiv had developed capabilities to hit targets beyond the reach of Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine has used domestically produced long-range drones to strike Moscow and beyond.
Its operations have been increasingly successful. On Monday a drone attack shut three of Moscow's airports. Another strike earlier this month damaged an oil refinery on the outskirts of the capital. There were reports on Wednesday that drones had targeted an airbase in Murmansk, in Russia's Arctic circle, 1,100 miles (1,800km) from Ukrainian lines.
Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the defence thinktank Rusi in London, said Ukraine had not briefed allies in advance about its surprise incursion in August into Russia's Kursk region. "It changed the debate about escalation and the use inside Russia of long-range weapons," he said.
He cautioned that it would be "very, very hard to knock out" Russian airbases, which were "mostly lots of concrete" and "hundreds of kilometres" beyond the frontline. Atacms missiles with cluster bomblets would be more effective than non-cluster-armed Storm Shadows, he suggested.
In Moscow, the deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said Russia would destroy any new Atacms deliveries, the state news agency Tass reported.
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How much damage will Joe Biden cause in the last three months of his political career? Congress is pushing for the US to escalate the war. Zelensky is pushing for the US to escalate the war. European countries supplying arms to Ukraine are waiting for the US to escalate the war.
Any guesses what's going to happen? It won't be Joe Biden's problem.
Wait. In 2022 the bumbling idiot President sent several M142 systems with a range of 9 km (5.6 mi) to 499 km (310 mi) depending on the munitions fired to Ukraine. And they've been using them. So, exactly what restrictions were in place?
That's what caused the kerfuffle over ATACMs. The US was not supplying long range missiles with the M142 system. Zelensky whined and threw tantrums until he got ATACMs. But the US imposed a restriction on how deep into Russia the ATACMs could be targeted.
The fact that Ukrainian arms producers manufacture long range weapons is being ignored by the western press. The US could avoid being sucked deeper into the war by supplying tooling and raw materials to support Ukraine's domestic weapons manufacturers. Remember that Ukraine sank the Moskva with a Ukrainian produced Neptune missile. Ukraine was one of the world's leading arms suppliers before the Russian invasion. And Ukraine is still producing weapons. The drones being used to target Russian equipment and encampments are produced in Ukraine.
I get it. The part that doesn't make sense is the US putting a ROE in effect for the use of them.
One of the lessons from Vietnam is that the military cannot be allowed to get ahead of the politics.
And because of that, the military suffers greatly.
Yeah? How'd Vietnam turn out?
Has it occurred to anyone that the reason the United States becomes trapped in these forever quagmires is because the military doesn't know how win or end wars any longer? Maybe there's a real flaw in our support for the military that results in so many veteran suicides.
The military hasn't led the country to victory since World War II. The military planning, strategy, and ideology even screws up a win. The military can't even kill Osama bin Laden without leaving behind the secret technology of the United States and robbing the public of sharing in that win. Maybe the military is responsible for its own suffering.
That, to me, was the beginning of not winning. The "rules of engagement" so to speak, basically took winning out of the equation. No bombing within a 10 mile radius of Hanoi was probably one of the major contributors. How the hell do you win when the capitol is still standing?
Strip out the political element from military operations and it won't be a problem. Vietnam was the beginning of where the political problems became evident. ROEs were set forth by some political asshat a few thousand miles away and those on the ground paid for it.
I've lost some close friends because of political bullshit interfering with operations. In Afghanistan we were told we could no longer conduct night operations because we were tearing the Taliban apart. When that went into effect we were catching IEDs by the dozen because we weren't out there stopping them from being put in place.
Good, give Russia a taste of what the Ukrainians are dealing with.
Then put the fuckin' Ukrainian factories to work. Ukraine can build it's own weapons if we would support the supply chain.
And what would stop Putin from bombing the crap out of the weapons factories?
They are at work, and fighting a war on their soil simultaneously.
Putin can do that now. Yet, Ukraine has struck Red Square in Moscow with Ukrainian made missiles.
Ukraine is a technologically advanced country. What do you think Ukraine would do with high-tech weapons from the US arsenal? What do you think Russian troops would do with captured high-tech weapons from the US arsenal?
What guarantees are there that a reunified Ukraine, with democratic elections, wouldn't drift back to ties with Russia? Ukrainian elections put Russia-friendly politicians in power. The only reason Ukraine is currently aligned with the west is because the pro-Russian factions in Ukraine have been disenfranchised. Why would that western alignment be guaranteed in a reunified Ukraine?
Yes, the Ukrainian factories are at work. And Ukraine is using Ukrainian weapons produced in Ukrainian factories to strike deep inside Russia. Ukraine has struck Red Square in Moscow using its own weapons. Ukraine has struck supply depots, airports, and naval vessels using its own long range missiles. And that avoids the US being drawn into that sort of escalation.
Why can't the United States support Ukrainian manufacture to avoid being drawn into the battlefield? Has the United States lost the capability of supporting manufacturing?
He can bomb non-existent weapons factories? Whooop-de-do
Exactly what they are doing now with high-tech weapons from the US arsenal. Holding their own and taking the fight to Russia.
That is a rather stupid question. Ukraine is fighting a war with thousands of casualties on both sides just so they do NOT have to reunite with Russia in any way. Did you forget what the war was about?????
Why do you think a western alignment is the goal, rather than just preventing the recreation of the USSR v2.0?
Notice the dates. News from yesterday and today.
Notice the date.
Save yourself some time next time and just admit you have no answers.