A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Ukraine’s stunning military offensive across the border in Kursk has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of a war that looked to be shifting heavily in Russia’s favor.
Kyiv’s momentum in the coming days and weeks may largely depend on the next U.S. move.
War analysts say the conflict has once again reached an inflection point. For Ukraine, some see a golden opportunity that was previously lost because of Biden administration policies limiting how Kyiv could use Western weapons or through America’s slow-walking of fighter jets, long-range artillery, tanks and other tools that Kyiv said it desperately needed at other critical moments in the fight.
Rather than waiting months to fulfill Ukraine’s requests — a pattern of the 2½-year war — specialists say the White House must act decisively and proactively and put Russian President Vladimir Putin on his heels by dramatically loosening or removing any restrictions on how Ukraine uses U.S.-provided weapons.
Analysts say Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has disoriented the Russian war machine. This month’s incursion at a weak point in the border far from the main area of fighting has suddenly added vulnerability to Russian refueling stations, ammunition depots, vehicle repair centers and even the joint military-Federal Security Services headquarters overseeing the Kremlin’s internal response to the Kursk campaign.
Those facilities could be hit with American-made weapons if Kyiv is approved to use them, underscoring Washington’s direct, immediate role in determining the future of the war.
“The fact of the matter is, the United States continues to chronically underevaluate the level of agency the U.S. actually has, and the extent to which our policies are rate determiners of Ukrainian capabilities,” said George Barros, the Russia team and geospatial intelligence team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, who has been closely tracking the conflict since its outset in February 2022.
“We like to pretend the U.S. is just playing a supporting role, that this is the Ukrainians’ fight, and we undersell what we can help them achieve,” Mr. Barros said in an interview. “There’s a chronic lack of creativity in terms of thinking about what we can actually do to create problems for the Russians and help the Ukrainians build momentum.”
Mr. Barros said Russia has “accumulated a tremendous amount of risk over time” by not defending vast swaths of territory along its border with Ukraine and has left vulnerable key military sites throughout the interior of Russia. Some of those sites are now especially vulnerable to enemy strikes because of the presence of Ukrainian troops, vehicles, weapons and other capabilities deep inside Russia’s Kursk oblast region.
“There are high-value targets that are difficult to move that [Ukraine] should eliminate before the Russians get to reduce the level of accumulated risk they’ve taken,” Mr. Barros said.
A turning point?
What the U.S. should or shouldn’t do to help Ukraine is under debate at a high-stakes moment on the battlefield. Ukrainian commanders say they control 500 square miles of Russian territory about three weeks after beginning the surprise incursion into Kursk. The campaign, which was planned and launched in secret, caught Moscow and Washington off guard and has reignited fundamental questions about the competence and organization of Mr. Putin’s military.
The Kremlin is reportedly redeploying thousands of forces to Kursk from elsewhere in the theater, potentially taking some of the pressure off Ukrainian troops battling a larger Russian force in the northeast near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Russia also is lashing out with what appears to be another round of indiscriminate attacks targeting Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure. Russian forces fired dozens of missiles and drones across Ukraine again on Tuesday, killing at least five people and destroying a hotel, homes and infrastructure in multiple Ukrainian regions, according to The Associated Press.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks used “long-range precision air- and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that support the operation of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex,” claiming that “all designated targets were hit.”
On Monday, Russia conducted a coordinated assault on Ukraine’s energy grid. In response, President Biden said in a statement that the U.S. “is surging energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
‘No restrictions’
Critics say the White House can and must do more immediately to aid Ukraine. They point to a consistent pattern of U.S. foot-dragging that has limited Ukraine’s prospects for victory. Mr. Biden and European leaders have defended the caution by citing a fear that a more aggressive approach would risk a direct war between a nuclear-armed Russia and the West.
Mr. Putin and his top aides have repeatedly referred to Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal in warning NATO and U.S. officials against taking a more direct role in the fighting in Ukraine.
The White House earlier this year lifted long-standing restrictions that kept Ukraine from using Western weapons to strike targets inside Russia — though that policy shift was limited to “defensive” strikes aimed at preventing Russian attacks, not an aggressive, offensive operation designed to degrade Moscow’s broader military infrastructure.
Still, the policy change eventually helped Ukraine blunt a relentless assault by Russian glide bombs and other aerial attacks launched from inside Russia.
Similar situations played out in 2022 and 2023, when the U.S. for months resisted giving Ukraine main battle tanks and the long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), respectively, at moments when those capabilities could have made a significant difference on the battlefield. U.S. F-16 fighter jets, supplied to Ukraine by European allies, are arriving for the fight after another long delay. Kyiv credited them Tuesday with shooting down some of the incoming Russian salvos.
This time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is making no secret about what his country needs.
“Weaknesses and lack of decisions in response feed terror. And every leader, every partner of ours knows what strong decisions are needed to end this war — and to end it justly,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in a speech this week. “There should be no restrictions on the range of weapons for Ukraine, while terrorists have no such restrictions. Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons, while Russia uses all kinds of its own weapons, as well as ‘Shahed’ drones [from Iran] and ballistic missiles from North Korea.”
Mr. Zelenskyy acknowledged that his complaints sometimes rankle his Western allies but vowed to keep speaking out as his country battles its larger, better-armed neighbor.
The allies “try not to speak with me about it, but I keep raising this topic,” he told reporters in Kyiv. “Generally, that’s it. The Olympics are over, but the pingpong continues.
He said the U.S., Britain, France and other partners “have the power to help us stop terror.”
At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Mr. Zelenskyy had also privately expressed those desires, but the U.S. has not changed its position.
“This is not a new desire by President Zelenskyy by any stretch. He’s made his concerns known to us privately, and he certainly has made his concerns known to everybody publicly. And we understand why he’s doing that. His country is under attack,” Mr. Kirby said.
“But as I’ve said many, many times, we’ll keep the conversations with the Ukrainians going, but we’re going to keep them private. And I have no changes to our policies with respect to U.S. weapons to speak to today or no guidelines to talk to.”
Critics of the White House approach say that U.S. policy strategically bolsters the Kremlin’s argument that America is a direct party to the conflict.
“We’re still not allowing Ukrainians to use long-range artillery like ATACMS against the Russians,” retired CIA Clandestine Services officer Daniel N. Hoffman told the “Threat Status” podcast this month.
“We should have said, ‘Here you go, do what you want with it, defend yourselves,’ and taken our hands off the steering wheel,” said Mr. Hoffman, who writes a regular column for The Washington Times. “Because when they’re on the steering wheel, then the Russians assume, rightly or wrongly, that we have some control tactically over Ukraine and the military options that they’re choosing, which is not what we want.”
He added, “We should have just given them what they needed when they needed it — and that’s two years ago — and let them do with it as they pleased.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.