As early as the summer of 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked the US government to supply precision-guided missile defense systems. The Army Tactical Missile System, or Atacms, was intended to help Kiev counter Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian targets. For example, through precise shelling of Russian positions behind the front line, such as military airports or ammunition depots.
Joe Biden denied Zelensky’s request for months. Shortly before the end of his term in office, the US President gave in to Kiev’s appeals. According to consistent reports from the New York Times, Washington Post and AFP, the Democrat lifted previous restrictions on Atacms delivered to Ukraine. The US military had previously delivered types with a shorter range. Kiev can now use missiles that can fly up to 300 kilometers and provide important advantages in the current course of the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that releasing Western weapons to attack Russian territory would mean NATO “entering war.” “This would significantly change the nature of the conflict,” Putin said in mid-September. Biden had reportedly shied away from this step out of concern about possible even nuclear escalation.
Now the US President has decided to do so. There are several reasons for this. The US government sees it as an escalation on the Russian side that Moscow has hired around ten thousand soldiers from North Korea to support it. These are deployed with Russian troops in the Russian border region near Kursk. The Ukrainians conquered the region in the summer, but are now in danger of losing it again because of North Korean reinforcements.
On the one hand, Biden wants to help Kiev hold the region in order to improve the Ukrainians’ negotiating position. On the other hand, he wants to send a clear warning signal to North Korea not to continue supporting Russia. The US president was at the APEC summit in Lima, Peru over the weekend, where he met with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, who have extremely tense relations with North Korea. North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong-un must be made to understand immediately that sending his soldiers was an “expensive mistake,” the Washington Post quoted a government official as saying.
Biden also met China’s President Xi Jinping in Lima, with whom he discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine and at the same time once again criticized Beijing’s support for Putin. However, China agrees with the West on one point: the use of nuclear weapons is a red line that Xi has also publicly drawn. People in Washington are therefore certain that Putin will not dare to take this step.
Biden’s move is clearly motivated by domestic politics. Before the election, the release of the range would have given Donald Trump another argument that the Democrats were “provoking World War III,” as Trump often claimed. On the other hand, this course correction is now forcing Trump to make a decision on day one of his inauguration: to take back the Atacsm and thereby weaken Kiev in front of the whole world and especially in front of the Russian attacks.
Or continue the course. “Biden’s decision may even end up being beneficial for Trump. Trump wants a quick deal between Moscow and Kyiv after January 20th. The release of the missiles is an asset that he can use at the negotiating table,” said Paul Stares, security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to WELT.
Undoubtedly, Biden’s decision will once again raise calls for the delivery of German Taurus missiles that have even greater range than the Atacms. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has so far categorically rejected this. However, over the past two years of war, the Social Democrat has released significant military aid to Ukraine whenever the US took similar steps. Scholz spoke to Putin on the phone for the first time in almost two years on Friday afternoon and, according to his own statements, asked the Kremlin boss to “withdraw his troops” and to be ready to negotiate with Ukraine.
However, it is expected that Great Britain will now deliver precision missiles to Kyiv. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had been planning this for months, but did not want to take the step without the US government. The Polish government also welcomes Biden’s decision. The US President responded to the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia and the massive Russian missile attacks on Sunday “in a language that (Russian President) Vladimir Putin understands,” wrote Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in the online service X. “The victim of aggression has the right to defend himself,” he added. “Strength deters, weakness provokes.”
Zelensky reacted more cautiously. In a video message, he referred to the importance of using long-range weapons in the defensive war against Russia. “Today there are many media reports that we have been given permission to take appropriate action,” he said. “But attacks are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves.”
