Joe Biden said the United States would not supply missiles to Ukraine that could reach Russia in a bid to ease tensions with Moscow over the potential deployment of long-range missiles at about 185 miles.
The White House is assessing requests from Ukraine – which is losing ground in the battle for Donbass – for multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) to compensate for Moscow’s increasingly effective use of long-range artillery, amid Russian warnings that this will crossed the red line.
“We will not send missile systems to Ukraine that could hit Russia,” Biden told reporters Monday after returning to the White House over the weekend in Delaware.
US-made MLRSs come in many different variants, which in turn use different munitions. The longest range can fire missiles up to 185 miles away, but others use missiles with shorter ranges of 20 to 40 miles.
The exact meaning of Biden’s remark on Monday was unclear, but it was consistent with other weekend briefings that the White House was ready to provide MLRS as long as it kept the longest-range missiles.
This was repeated on Monday. A senior US official said: “The MLRS is under review, but nothing is on the table with long-range strike capabilities.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described Biden’s remarks as “reasonable” and warned that if his country’s cities were hit, then Russian forces would “strike at the centers of these criminal decisions.”
Ukraine appears to be on the verge of losing the city of Severodonetsk, the easternmost city it held in the Donbass region, amid relentless Russian artillery shelling that destroyed large parts of the city, which had a pre-war population of 100,000.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged late Sunday that “all critical infrastructure” and “more than two-thirds of the city’s housing stock” have been “completely destroyed” as he called for “more modern weapons to protect our land.” to protect our people. “
Nick Reynolds, a ground war specialist at the Russia Brain Trust, said: “The difference in artillery capabilities is a major factor in allowing Russian ground forces to move forward.”
Russian firepower prevented Ukraine’s forces from accumulating counterattacks, the analyst said, adding that the MLRS could help Kyiv by “disrupting any activity in enemy rear areas.”
Last week, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine published a video of the shelling of its positions by Russian TOS-1A flamethrowers in the Donetsk region. “Ukraine is ready to retaliate. To do this, we need a NATO-style MLRS. “Immediately,” the ministry said on Twitter.
The MLRS M270 chain and its wheeled equivalent, the M142 high-mobility artillery missile system (HIMARS), have a much wider range than Ukraine can currently deploy. Using them could allow Kyiv to strike at Russian targets from afar, although it could expose more of its insides to revenge.
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Ukraine started the war with artillery as Soviet standard howitzers with a range of about 10 miles, before the United States agreed to send 90 NATO-standard artillery weapons to Ukraine. Depending on the projectiles used, the M777 can have a range of up to 25 miles.
US Army’s M777 howitzer during an exercise in northeastern Poland last November. Photo: Tomasz Waszczuk / EPA
Other NATO members may follow the example of the United States. Ukraine is also pushing the UK to supply some of its own M270, with some sources complaining that Britain is procrastinating. The British M270 has a range of 52 miles, although 44 of the army’s reserves are being upgraded to 93 miles.
Last Friday, Boris Johnson, the UK’s prime minister, said the MLRS would allow Ukrainians to “defend themselves against this very brutal Russian artillery and this is where the world needs to go”. His remarks, a public acknowledgment of Ukraine’s request, fueled expectations that the announcement could come in days.
U.S. briefings suggest the announcement may come later this week, after Monday’s Remembrance Day.
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