Why the Pentagon tacitly endorses Ukraine's attacks inside Russia

The Pentagon is giving tacit backing for Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia because they are seen to be fully justified following President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against the country’s critical infrastructure. Since the daily assaults on civilians began in October, the Pentagon has revised its threat assessment of the war in Ukraine. Crucially this has included fresh judgments about whether arms shipments to Kyiv might lead to a military confrontation between Russia and Nato. “We’re still using the same escalatory calculations. But the fear of escalation has changed since the beginning. It’s different now. This is because the calculus of war has changed as a result of the suffering and brutality the Ukrainians are being subjected to by the Russians,” a US defence source said. There is now less concern that the strikes inside Russia could lead to a dramatic escalation. Moscow’s revenge attacks have all involved conventional missile strikes against civilian targets. In the past, the Pentagon was more wary of Ukraine attacking Russia because of the fear that Moscow would retaliate either with tactical nuclear weapons or by targeting neighbouring Nato nations. However, Washington doesn’t want to be seen publicly giving the green light to Kyiv attacking Russia. The official US position on Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia was laid out by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, this week when he said:”We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.” However, a US defence source put it another way. “We’re not saying to Kyiv, don’t strike the Russians [in Russia or Crimea]. We can’t tell them what to do, it’s up to them how they use their weapons.” “But when they use the weapons we have supplied, the only thing we insist on is that the Ukrainian military conform to the international laws of war and to the Geneva conventions. They are the only limitations, but that includes no targeting of Russian families and no assassinations,” the source said. The tacit Pentagon backing for strikes in Russia was implied when the source added; “As far as we’re concerned Ukraine has been in compliance.” Within these limited constraints laid down by the Pentagon, the Kyiv government has now adopted a more aggressive and more persistent offensive against targets inside Russia. But Ukrainian forces have been careful to use their own Soviet-era drones, not US-supplied weapons, to carry out the strikes. The drones, based on Soviet Tupolev TU-141 Strizh surveillance systems developed in the 1970s, have been reprogrammed to give them longer range and a sizeable munition for launching at low altitude. The modified TU-141s were used this week in three raids against military bases 300 miles inside the Russian border, and on fuel tanks about 80 miles across the Ukrainian border, in each case evading air defences. The drones can fly at 600mph at low altitude, like cruise missiles. Ukraine and the US are playing a careful game over these strikes which have added a new, much bolder ingredient to drone warfare in the nine months since the invasion. The Pentagon refuses to make any public statements about the attacks, and the Kyiv government has declined to acknowledge responsibility. However, if the US decides to supply Ukraine with longer-range weapons, capable of launching attacks in Russia, the issue would become more controversial. The fear of potential escalation could increase dramatically. Pentagon officials, however, have made it clear that requests from Kyiv for longer-range American weapons, including rockets and fighter bombers which could be used for even more effective strikes inside Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, are being seriously considered and have not been ruled out. “Nothing is off the table,” a senior US defence official has stated. The weapons high on Kyiv’s list include the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) which has a range of about 190 miles and would be devastatingly effective and accurate if used in deep-penetration raids into Russia. Until now the Pentagon, in discussions with Nato allies, has deferred the decision on whether to go down this route; and US defence sources would not be drawn on a report in The Wall Street Journal which claimed that the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that has been operating in Ukraine for several months had been modified to prevent it firing the ATACMS. The drone Ukraine wants more than any other is the American MQ-1C Gray Eagle which has a range of 250 miles, is armed with four Hellfire missiles or eight Stinger missiles, can remain airborne for more than 24 hours and is equipped with sophisticated reconnaissance systems. Again, the decision on this piece of kit is still in abeyance. Eric Edelman, a former distinguished US official who served both in the Pentagon as the top policy specialist and at the state department as ambassador to Finland, then Turkey, believes the delay in supplying these weapon systems is no longer sustainable. “The [Biden] administration is excessively self-deterred by the prospect of an alleged escalatory spiral which is largely illusory,” he said. “The best thing for all concerned is for the Ukrainians to be able to win as quickly as possible and hence it makes sense to give them ATACMS and Gray Eagles and help them to put together a package of main battle tanks as well,” he said. When the Russian invasion began on February 24, the US policy on arming Ukraine was based on two fundamental principles: that the American weapons supplied would not be used to attack Russia itself and that the choice of warfare equipment would be conditional on the need to avoid the risk of a war between Nato and Russia. The objective was to arm Ukraine to defend itself against an illegal assault on its sovereignty, not for Nato to confront Russia. But the initial acute sensitivities surrounding Nato’s arming of Ukraine have all but vanished. “Unlike at the beginning we are now prepared to give a lot more detail about the shipments,” one US defence source said. For example, the first shipment included man-portable air defence systems (manpads). It was only later that the state department confirmed they were Stingers. “We were initially worried about spelling out that we were supplying Stingers because of the scar tissue left from our supply of these weapons to the Mujahideen against the Russians in Afghanistan,” the defence source said. *Read my spy thriller, Shadow Lives, available on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble and Rowanvale Books.