Debate over Ukraine weapons restrictions divides allies, administration

The latest ask by Kyiv — to receive permission to use the U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, and other longer-range munitions to reach targets such as strategic airfields deeper inside Russia — will be made by President Volodymyr Zelensky personally during his meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington this week.

But in an example of the widening disconnect between the two sides more than two years into Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainians had expected Biden to have already granted permission by now, according to two officials who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The discussion is ongoing in Washington, splitting the Biden administration and Capitol Hill, and it has confounded America’s partners in Europe, several of whom have publicly said they’re in favor of granting the permission for more cross-border strikes using their missiles. For this article, Washington Post reporters interviewed more than a dozen officials in Ukraine, NATO member countries, and both the Biden administration and Congress to gauge the temperature of the fierce debate over the management of Ukraine’s war.

So far, U.S. officials insist there is no indication that the White House will change its position on this. But the Ukrainians have heard that before. They point to a U.S. pattern of repeatedly denying their weapons requests — on modern tanks, fighter jets and longer-range missiles — before eventually giving the green light each time. And with the lengthy debates playing out in public, the Russians have always had time to prepare long before the new weapons reach the battlefield.

U.S. officials, for their part, express frustration about what they perceive as Ukraine’s lack of understanding of their occasionally cautious approach even as they provide Kyiv with significantly more security assistance than anyone else. Russian President Vladimir Putin has framed his attack on Ukraine as part of a war against the West — the United States in particular — and Washington has often cited managing escalation with Moscow as a reason for not approving some of Ukraine’s armament requests immediately.

It is a point of view strongly held by the campaign for Republican candidate Donald Trump as well, with his son co-writing an opinion piece in the Hill warning against nuclear conflagration if such permissions are given.

That rationale is mocked in Ukraine — where the daily Russian bombardment has killed thousands and Russian troops occupy more than 20 percent of the country. More frustrating for Ukrainians is seeing Russia receive a steady supply of critical weapons from Iran and North Korea.

“As it turns out, Russia has more decisive allies than we do,” said Roman Kostenko, the secretary of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s parliament. “It’s shameful for the West.”

In Zelensky’s meeting with Biden this week, the Ukrainian delegation’s priority is to pitch its secretive “victory plan” as an opportunity for Biden to leave office with a legacy of having helped Ukraine win the war against Russia. An important aspect of that plan is the ability to hit the Russians on their own territory. Russian glide bombs, converted munitions with guidance systems that are launched from aircraft, have been devastating Ukrainian front lines.

With Kyiv’s limited air defense capabilities unable to prevent the glide bomb attacks, Ukrainian officials want to hit the planes launching these weapons while they are still on the airfields in Russia. But those runways are out of range of the Western weaponry they currently are permitted to use for cross-border strikes.

“We think the permission should be granted yesterday, not today or tomorrow,” one Ukrainian official said. “Otherwise, the phrase ‘We want to see Ukraine as strong as possible for any scenario’ looks like total BS.”

The Ukrainians also want more agency to pick their own targets, including energy infrastructure, such as oil depots, officials said. Those kinds of strikes can hurt Russia’s economy, limiting its ability to fund the war effort, explained a senior Ukrainian military official. It’s fair play, the official added, as Moscow has been pummeling Ukraine’s power grid for the past two years, causing rolling blackouts throughout the country.

But Kyiv has long been dependent on receiving target coordinates for strikes with its precision Western weaponry from U.S. military personnel on a base elsewhere in Europe. Without those, the missile is likely to miss its mark, the military official said, and the United States has sometimes declined to provide coordinates for some of Kyiv’s desired targets.

“The weapons are often used on what we would consider less important targets,” the official said.

U.S. officials argue that Ukraine has such a limited stockpile of ATACMS and similar munitions that opening up Russian territory to strikes would make only a limited impact on the battlefield and could lead to the missiles running out in a matter of weeks, or even days.

White House and Defense Department officials say that they have not heard a convincing argument from Ukrainian leaders that the possible targets within missile range in Russia would make a significant difference in Ukraine’s path to victory. They say that using the missiles against targets in Crimea, as Ukraine has done so far, is a more worthwhile strategy that has already forced the Kremlin to pull forces back from the peninsula.

One U.S. official maintained that this request is different from past ones because it is not worth the risk of a Russian escalation. Because the stockpile of missiles is limited and Russia has already pulled 90 percent of the jets launching glide bombs out of ATACMS range, a changed U.S. policy would not reshape the course of the fighting.

But European military officials and diplomats emphatically disagreed that allowing the longer-range strikes into Russia would only have limited impact and condemned the policy of refusing to lift the restrictions on Western weapons.

“On the technical and strategic level, it doesn’t make sense. It’s actually stupid,” one Western military official said, adding that NATO’s own military doctrine calls for deep strikes behind enemy lines.

While the United States’ green-lighting of deeper missile strikes into Russia would not be enough on its own for Ukraine to win the war, the official said, it would help disrupt Russian logistics, target command centers and weapon depots. In addition, the longer the wait for permission, the less effective the long-range strike capability will eventually be.

Ukrainian and European officials said they’ve already recorded the Russians using the airfields closest to Ukraine’s border less. Military aircraft now use these landing strips for just a quick stop to refuel or maintenance.

“There’s no doubt that if there is a decision on this now, to allow these weapons to be used, some of the advantage has already been squandered through this timorousness,” said Keir Giles, an analyst at the London-based Chatham House think tank.

One Ukrainian official suggested that the new American argument about the lack of effectiveness of cross-border strikes probably emerged “because the previous excuse is not working anymore.”

A European diplomat in Kyiv said they believed Ukraine launched its recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in part to make a statement to the West that Putin’s red lines can be crossed without fear of major retaliation, such as the use of nuclear weapons.

But Russia still can escalate elsewhere in ways that make the Biden administration’s life more difficult on the world stage, U.S. officials said, by arming the Houthi militia group in Yemen that has been threatening maritime traffic in the Red Sea, for example, or handing nuclear know-how to Iran, or increasing its campaign of sabotage attacks in Europe.

Those considerations aren’t enough to dissuade the Biden administration from taking any confrontational steps against Russia — Ukraine has been using U.S. weaponry on Russian soil in its attack on the Kursk region in ways that stretch the previous rules of engagement for U.S. military aid — but in the specific case of ATACMS, the benefits of allowing strikes on Russian soil are not compelling enough to outweigh the drawbacks, the officials said.

Still, there are splits within the administration: Even after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear his firm opposition to loosening the rules around ATACMS strikes, Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated this month in a visit to Kyiv that he was open to the Ukrainian arguments and would ultimately bring them back to Biden for a broader discussion in Washington.

That discussion is ongoing, officials said, with those inside the National Security Council trying to manage the differences between the Defense Department and the State Department.

U.S. officials say that they would have preferred that Ukraine pursue its requests in private rather than mount the public campaign that it has waged. But the Ukrainians counter that this public pressure campaign was born out of desperation after the private approach was rejected. The downside, of course, is that it telegraphs their plans to Russia.

One Western diplomat said that it was normal for such decisions to take time and that even if the debate is public, it doesn’t necessarily give Russia a military advantage, “but it gives them an in into who is the weakest link in the chain. It gives them leverage in terms of messaging and playing into our fears.”

Some European countries have joined Ukraine’s call for the United States to lift its restrictions, and diplomats said they wouldn’t rule out a U.S. policy shift in a war that has seen the goal posts repeatedly move. Britain and France are also providing longer-range missiles to Ukraine, and both have been vocal in supporting Ukraine using their munitions on Russian territory.

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, however, appeared to be lowering expectations that Ukraine’s allies would make a quick decision over whether to allow Ukraine to fire their long-range missiles deep into Russia. He told the BBC a week ago that the matter would be discussed with Ukraine by its allies at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

“These decisions come with a risk that is not small,” said a European official. “But in general, on the question of whether it’s an escalatory risk or is Putin bluffing, you never really know. The decisions are not made in fear of that.”

While Ukrainian officials are quick to express their gratitude for any foreign military assistance, they also point out that they’re paying the highest price. And any delays on weapons use cost the lives of their soldiers, they say.

“It’s time to choose,” said Mykola Bielieskov, an analyst linked to Ukraine’s presidential office. “Now you can’t sit on two chairs simultaneously. You need to take one chair. The balancing act is a byproduct of crisis management instead of good strategy.”

Birnbaum reported from Washington and Francis from Brussels. David L. Stern and Serhii Korolchuk in Kyiv; William Booth in London; Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia; and Missy Ryan, Abigail Hauslohner and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.