The decision of US President Joe Biden to authorise Ukraine to use US long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia, as confirmed to US media channels on 17 November 2024 by multiple officials familiar with the decision, could help Ukrainian forces hold on to their territorial gains in Russia’s Kursk region in advance of the impending second presidential term of Donald Trump.
Kyiv’s authorisation to use its US-supplied MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of around 300 km, for deeper strikes is reported to be limited to defending Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a surprise incursion in August 2024. Holding that Russian territory could provide a considerable bargaining chips for any peace talks in the new year.
The response in Moscow to the news was a predictably angry one, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, telling journalists on 18 November that Biden’s decision “means a whole new spiral of tension and a whole new situation with regard to US involvement in this conflict”, adding that the Biden administration was “adding fuel to the fire and continuing to stoke tension around this conflict”. President Putin himself, meanwhile, has so far not offered comment.
In reality, Putin already ‘added fuel to the fire’ in the Ukraine War in October 2024 by deploying around 10,000 North Korean troops to the Kursk region. The general opinion on this of Western military analysts was that the North Korean troops were likely to be expendable cannon fodder that would allow Russia to try to reclaim its lost territory without any significant loss of Russian lives.
The US authorisation of wider and longer-reaching Ukrainian ATACMS use in the region may have gone some way to countering the North Korean threat.
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military leaders wait to see what a second Trump presidential term from January will do to their prospects for finding an adequate resolution to their conflict with Russia, longer-range ATACMS use has most likely dealt them a better hand.
