Russian officials reacted furiously Monday to President Biden’s decision to allow Ukrainian forces greater use of American long-range missiles, saying Washington explicitly ignored a warning from President Vladimir Putin.
Officials in the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced Mr. Biden’s about-face. They said U.S. and allied troops would inevitably be needed inside Ukraine to operate the missiles, which can target sites much deeper behind Russian lines.
The move was seen as a belated win for the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which has long complained about restrictions on U.S. and allied military aid as its forces struggle to hold off a larger, better-armed Russian invading force. Mr. Biden has tried, often with difficulty, to balance support for Kyiv’s fight without igniting a direct war between NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia.
Among the potential targets for the longer-range American missiles are thousands of North Korean troops who have joined the fight on Moscow’s behalf in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have seized a sliver of Russian border territory.
The U.S. has not officially announced the policy change or explained why Mr. Biden changed his mind, but senior officials confirmed the shift over the weekend.
Top Russian officials said the U.S. will take on a much more active role in the war by easing restrictions on Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS. They can fire rockets with a range of nearly 200 miles and strike Russian positions far beyond the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine.
“Ukraine cannot execute such strikes on its own without using space satellites and flight assignments provided by NATO military personnel,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters. “No ‘wonder weapon’ that Zelenskyy and his henchmen pray to get is capable of affecting the course of the special military operation.”
“Special military operation” is how Russia officially characterizes its war in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters in Washington that “it is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict.” He called Mr. Biden’s move “reckless, dangerous and aimed at a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States.”
State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said in an interview with the official Tass news service that the U.S. policy would not help Ukraine in its struggles on the battlefield but had the potential to “ruin Russian-American relations.”
Friendly fire
Reflecting the administration’s cross-pressures as it tries to keep an unwieldy alliance united behind Kyiv, Mr. Biden took friendly fire from some NATO allies that favor a more accommodating stance toward Russia as a way to a negotiated peace deal.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto pointedly said the ATACM decision goes against the will of the American people after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election this month.
“One has the feeling that the pro-war political elites on both sides of the ocean are launching one last desperate, scalding attack on the new realities and the will of the people,” Mr. Szijjarto said.
Pentagon officials would not confirm reports that Mr. Biden had lifted restrictions on using ATACMS but said the systems had been made available to Ukrainian forces. Some critics say Mr. Biden’s offer threatens to further deplete U.S. missile stocks needed for homeland defense.
“Over the course of different presidential drawdown packages, we have provided Ukraine with ATACMS,” Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh said. “Our support for Ukraine continues with different” presidential drawdowns.
She wouldn’t say how many ATACMS were sent to Ukraine and declined to confirm how many remain in the U.S. arsenal.
“We’re not going to dip below our own readiness levels,” Ms. Singh said.
Trump and Ukraine
Supporters of Mr. Trump accused the Biden administration of seeking to ratchet up the tension in Ukraine and Russia with only two months left in office. Several members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, notably Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, have expressed skepticism over the huge grants of money and arms given to Ukraine since the war started in February 2022.
Mr. Trump has said he can quickly end the war but has not specified a potential peace deal. Some supporters said Mr. Biden’s move would make it harder for the president-elect to implement his plans.
“No one anticipated that Joe Biden would escalate the war in Ukraine during the transition period. This is as if he is launching a whole new war,” Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, posted on X. “Everything has changed now — all previous calculations are null and void — and all for politics.”
“[The] American people elected Joe Biden to a four-year term, not to a term of three years and 10 months,” Mr. Miller said, “and we will use every day of our term to pursue the foreign policy interests that we believe are in the interests of the American people.”
The Russian protests may reflect unease in the Kremlin about its position.
October was the bloodiest month for Russia in its war. On Monday, British officials said Moscow had 41,980 casualties — killed and wounded — on the battlefield last month. The previous high was 39,110 in May.
Daily Russian casualties also reached a new high in October, with an average daily loss rate of 1,354 reported by Ukraine’s general staff, British military officials said on X in their latest assessment of the battlefield.
“This is the second straight month that Russian forces have suffered new war high average daily losses. The average daily losses for the first 12 days of November 2024 is 1,498, indicating that this upward trajectory is likely to continue,” British officials said.
Allied intelligence analysts say Russia has likely sustained more than 700,000 casualties since the start of the war. The Kremlin has increased the tempo of offensive operations over the past month in an apparent attempt to increase pressure on Ukrainian lines to push Kyiv back on several fronts, including in the Kursk oblast.
“Russia will highly likely continue to experience high casualty rates over the remainder of the year with continued dismounted infantry tactics on multiple axes throughout winter,” British officials said.
The role of the North Korean troops in the fighting and whether they had sustained casualties were unclear.