On Sunday afternoon, both the New York Times and Washington Post reported that the Biden Administration had finally made the decision to allow Ukraine to use American long-range missiles for strikes inside Russian territory. Referencing multiple anonymous U.S. sources, the NYT writes: “The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia.” They add, however, that “Mr. Biden could authorize them to use the weapons elsewhere.” The decision marks an enormous escalation in the U.S.’ involvement in the war, and brings the world closer than ever to the outbreak of a direct U.S.-Russia conflict.
The papers claim there are two factors behind the decision. One is “to put Ukraine in the best possible place ahead of peace talks that the new U.S. president is expected to spearhead early in his term,” according to the Washington Post. Ukraine seized hundreds of square miles of Russian territory in a major operation into the Kursk region over the summer, territory which it has been slowly losing ever since. The calculus, so the narrative goes, is to provide Ukraine with the firepower so it can deter Russian advances over the coming months and be in a better position to negotiate when Trump comes into office.
The second factor is the alleged presence of thousands of North Korean troops in Russia, and the allegation that they will soon send thousands more if not deterred. “One of the goals of the policy change, they [the sources] said, is to send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them,” writes the NYT.
