In a major policy shift, U.S. President Joe Biden has for the first time authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, according to U.S. news accounts.
The reported decision comes two months before Biden leaves office and ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. The incoming president has voiced skepticism of continued U.S. support for the government in Kyiv and claimed, without offering any details, that he will end Russia’s 33-month war on Ukraine before he takes office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has for months pushed the United States to agree to use of the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, to help thwart Moscow’s continuing barrage of airstrikes and ground advances in eastern Ukraine.
But initially, the weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea's decision to send thousands of troops to Russia in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Pyongyang’s troops have been fighting alongside Moscow’s forces in Russia’s southern Kursk region at the Ukrainian border, which Kyiv invaded in August, shocking the Russian military command.
Trump sidestepped a direct question at his September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris about whether he wanted Ukraine to win in its war against Russia, saying simply, “I want the war to stop.”
He instead focused on the war’s human toll by saying that people were being killed “by the millions,” a number that far exceeds any confirmed death toll, although some estimates say about one million Russians and Ukrainians have been killed and injured.
Trump went on to say that if elected, he would negotiate a deal even before becoming president and suggested the United States was “playing with World War III” with its support for Ukraine against Russia.
Harris quickly claimed that if Trump had been president during the invasion, then “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe,” and that in such a scenario the Russian president would move on to Poland.
The U.S. support of Ukraine took a back seat among concerns for U.S. voters, who told pollsters they were most worried about the cost of consumers goods and the influx of undocumented migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Trump swept through seven U.S. political battleground states in the November 5 election to easily defeat Harris. He is set to be inaugurated on January 20.
