Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet President Joe Biden at the White House tomorrow where they will discuss Zelenskyy’s so-called “victory plan” and the matter of allowing Ukraine to strike targets in Russia with Western-supplied long-range missiles. The outcome is still unclear.
White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said at a news conference for international reporters in New York, Sept. 24: “The President has been consistent that our policy is that long range strike capabilities provided by the U.S. are not to be used against targets in Russia. He has not made a policy change on that. He’s still in the same place. That’s the guidance that we have provided to Ukraine. We understand that they have asked for that to be changed. I’m sure the issue will come up. But he [Biden] has not changed his view that the use of U.S. weapons, long range weapons, against targets in Russia is prohibited.”
But on Sept. 25, numerous media accounts were reporting that Biden is now leaning towards approval. The White House today provided a “Readout of President Biden’s Pull Aside with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine” at the United Nations, reporting that “President Biden informed President Zelenskyy that he has directed a surge in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, which will be announced publicly tomorrow, and which will help Ukraine win.… Following their meeting in New York, President Biden convened a historic event in support of Ukraine at which the leaders of more than 30 countries agreed to sign a Joint Declaration of Support for the Recovery and Reconstruction of Ukraine.”
A Sept. 24 story in the Washington Post reported that, in fact, there’s a huge brawl going on within the administration over the issue of long-range missiles. Two Kiev officials told the Post that they had expected the U.S. to have given the permission for long-range strikes by now. They said that the current U.S. administration is divided on the issue, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin opposed to changing the policy and Secretary of State Antony Blinken siding with Kiev. According to the Post, the U.S. military believes that when it comes to ATACMS, the purported benefits “are not compelling enough to outweigh the drawbacks.” Both the U.K. and France are weighing in heavily for approval to allow Ukraine to use the missiles, according to the Post.
The Post did admit that Kiev “has long been dependent” on receiving target coordinates for U.S.-provided weapons “from U.S. military personnel on a base elsewhere in Europe.”
