SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE – It may be President Biden’s most consequential decision about the Ukraine war since Russia’s February 2022 invasion: allowing Ukraine to strike Russian territory with American weapons.
“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S.-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region,” the White House said in a statement issued Thursday. The change in policy was approved so that “Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them.”
That somewhat technical statement amounted to a reversal of a U.S. red line. From the early days of the war, the White House has sought to balance full-throated military and financial support for Ukraine with a fear of drawing U.S. or other NATO forces into direct conflict with Russia. Put simply, help Ukraine win but – as Biden himself said – “avoid World War III.”
That fear was behind initial refusals to send various U.S. weapons systems to Ukraine, although in nearly every case – from HIMARS rocket launchers to F-16 fighter jets to long-range ATACMS missiles – the initial “no” turned to “yes”, as officials determined that the benefits of providing the weapons outweighed the risks of a Russia-NATO confrontation.
The immediate aim of the shift is to help Ukraine save its northeastern Kharkiv region, which is home to Ukraine’s second-largest city and has been under a steady Russian assault. On Friday, Ukrainian officials said the latest Russian strikes on Kharkiv had killed five people and injured two dozen more. Earlier this week, a Russian attack on a market in northern Kharkiv killed 19 and injured 48.
Using U.S. weapons would end – or at least challenge – what has been a safe haven for Russian forces, air bases and weapons depots positioned just across the border.
“Biden’s permission for Ukraine to use American weapons to strike inside Russia in defense of Kharkiv is a belated recognition of a fundamental factor of war: that you cannot prevail when the adversary has an untouchable sanctuary — which Russia has enjoyed for more than two years,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA and a Cipher Brief expert. “Such a sanctuary — Russian territory — is particularly disabling when it is so close to your most vulnerable targets; (the city of) Kharkiv is only 12 miles from the Russian border.”
U.S. officials stressed that while the ban on using its weapons against Russia has been lifted, important limits remain. American weapons may be used for retaliatory attacks or preemptive strikes against military positions preparing to attack Ukraine, but not for offensive strikes, or assaults deep into Russian territory. The prohibition against “long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed,” the White House said.
It’s still a profound shift, and it raises several crucial questions: How will Ukraine use the U.S. green light? How might Russia respond? And will the change swing battlefield momentum back to the Ukrainian side?
Better late than never?
McLaughlin was one of several Cipher Brief experts who welcomed the new policy, and one of many who believe it should have come sooner.
“This is a welcome, if long overdue, decision,” said Mike Vickers, a former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He noted that several NATO allies “had already removed their own restrictions by the time the President made his decision, but better late than never.”
“We should have lifted the restrictions 10 years ago when this war began.” said Gen. Philip Breedlove, another Cipher Brief expert and the former top commander at Europe’s Supreme Allied Command. Not doing so, he said, has meant that “Ukraine has to ‘receive serve’ continuously,” while Russia attacks almost at will.
“Ukraine should be able to use any weapons we provide against any legitimate targets,” said Cipher Brief expert Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe. “That includes striking Russian headquarters, logistics, troop concentrations, artillery and rocket positions, and airfields from which the Russians are launching their attacks which murder innocent Ukrainian civilians. There are no legal, moral, or military reasons for restricting their use by Ukraine.”
Gen. Hodges likened the failure to help Ukraine defend its civilians to what he called the “tragic error” of United Nations forces who stood by in Srebrenica in 1995 while innocent Bosnians were murdered.
The difference in this case – and the issue that led to intense debate over the policy – is the power of the adversary. The innocents in Srebrenica were murdered by the Bosnian Serbs, a potent force in a relatively small country in southern Europe. The enemy in this case is a nation with one of the largest militaries and largest nuclear arsenals on earth.
Behind the White House shift
Recent battlefield developments, changing views within NATO, and a visit to Ukraine by Secretary of State Antony Blinken turned a low-boil debate over the ban into a matter of urgency.
Since early May, Russia has made significant gains in northeast Ukraine and struck civilian targets in the region, using forces positioned just across the border in Russia. Ukrainian commanders said they knew the locations of Russian troops and aircraft that were launching the attacks, but were unable to hit those positions because of the U.S. restrictions.
In a recent trip to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken heard complaints about the not-in-Russia rules – including a plea from President Volodymyr Zelensky to reverse the policy. Zelensky made the pitch in a public way in a May 20 interview with The New York Times. Russia’s cross-border attacks were handing Moscow a “huge advantage” in the war, he said. “They proceed calmly,” Zelensky said of the Russian troops, “understanding that our partners do not give us permission” to strike back.
On his return to Washington, Blinken told Biden that the Ukrainians might lose the territory between Kharkiv and the Russian border unless Biden changed the policy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. lagged behind its allies on the issue; Britain and France had consented to the same Ukrainian wish, and this week Germany followed suit. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis chimed in last week, saying the ban was based on irrational fears. “From the beginning, we have made the mistake of limiting the Ukrainians because it could be seen as an escalation,” Landsbergis said.
And outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg took a rare swipe at the U.S., telling The Economist that “to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.”
Less than a week later, the White House announced the change.
How a U.S. green light changes the game
Despite the limits of the new policy, experts agree it will go a long way to slowing if not stopping the Russian assault against Kharkiv. Russian military jets have been bombarding the Kharkiv region from the border area in recent weeks, and the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said those planes can hit roughly 16,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory without ever leaving Russia. Those planes will presumably now be prime targets for Ukraine.
As The Cipher Brief reported prior to the decision, Ukraine will have no shortage of other Russian targets. Russia has assembled tens of thousands of troops just beyond the range of Ukrainian artillery—cannon, howitzers, and mortars—and kept them safe from attack until they cross the frontline, some 20 miles north of Kharkiv. The new policy puts those Russian assets at risk.
Experts also noted that the language in the White House statement – allowing the use of U.S. weapons against “Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them” – may be interpreted liberally by Ukrainian commanders. Certainly it ends what had been an effective safe haven for Russian troops and materiel near the Kharkiv region.
“The outcome of the ongoing battle for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, could well depend on this decision,” Vickers said. “Let’s hope that it is followed by others that enable Ukraine to win this war and not just put up a heroic fight.”
It’s not clear how or whether the U.S. would discipline Ukraine if its commanders pushed the envelope and struck deeper into Russia. Gen. Hodges reposted on X a map of Russia in which the country’s name was crossed out and replaced with “Near Kharkiv.” The clear message: More of Russia should now be in play.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Blinken wouldn’t rule out the possibility that President Biden would ease some of the remaining restrictions on the use of American weapons.
“Going forward, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is: As necessary, adapt and adjust,” Blinken said following a NATO meeting in Prague.
What will Russia do?
It’s not clear how Russia will respond to the change. In the runup to the decision, the Kremlin warned repeatedly that it would not tolerate the use of U.S. weapons against its territory, and last week Russia carried out a series of exercises for units involved in the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. The drills looked like a clear message to Washington.
Russia has used the nuclear threat many times since the earliest days of the war, and some Cipher Brief experts said that the Biden Administration had been overly influenced by Kremlin bluster.
Gen. Hodges said the White House had been “driven by an excessive and overwhelming fear of Russian escalation that is not going to happen. Rather than focusing on helping Ukraine win,” Hodges said, “they instead give into constant Russian threats and focus on ‘escalation management.’ This has been shown over the last two years to be a failed approach which only prolongs the conflict and leads to more lives lost.”
Another Cipher Brief expert, former top commander and CIA director General David Petraeus, said before the White House decision was made public that he supported the shift and saw only a “marginally higher risk of some form of escalation, though I tend to doubt there is anything significant that Russia will do.”
Apparently U.S. officials had come to that conclusion as well. For all of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats, which began when he put his nuclear forces on alert in the first days of the war, he has shown no inclination to directly challenge the U.S. or NATO militarily. In 2022, many officials and outside experts feared Russia would retaliate with strikes against NATO weapons or supply convoys outside Ukraine; it never happened.
McLaughlin, the former CIA leader, warned in those early days of a NATO-Russia collision, and today he notes that as France, Poland, and the Baltic nations contemplate more direct aid to Kviv, “NATO is edging toward a more direct challenge to Russia’s invasion.” But he, too, doubts that Putin would risk any direct aggression against NATO.
“Putin will probably rattle his nuclear weapons again, but all of this begins to call his bluff,” McLaughlin said. “Were he to use nukes in any form, he would risk a loss of Chinese support and Indian tolerance. And he knows, or at least deeply fears, that Russian forces would not win in a full-fledged fight with NATO.”
But several reports suggested that senior Biden administration officials remain uneasy about a possible escalation. The New York Times reported that Washington had conveyed a concern to Zelensky about recent Ukrainian strikes against nuclear early-warning radar systems inside Russia. Those strikes were carried out by Ukrainian-made drones and missiles; the U.S. officials made clear that no American weapons should be used against such targets, which are critical to nuclear stability.
Karl Walling, a former professor at the Naval War College, told The Cipher Brief that “escalation control” is still a major concern. “As the war has progressed, most gloves have been taken off, in part because Russia’s red lines proved mostly bluster,” Walling said. “One mistake in testing those limits could be catastrophic.”
The world will soon know whether the latest Russian warnings are merely one more round of bluster. U.S. officials say the first Ukrainian counterattacks with American weapons are imminent.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief.
