Dodgy optics and the use of the Army Tactical Missile System against the United States: Putin’s first American attack on Ukraine

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that Ukraine’s military was incapable of deploying sophisticated long-range weapons without direct input from NATO specialists. NATO countries will be at war with Russia, according to Putin.

The argument from Ukraine and its Western supporters is this: If Russia is not constrained in battering every corner of Ukraine, as it demonstrated on Sunday, why should Ukraine be constrained in its fight? The weapon in question, the Army Tactical Missile System (known as ATACMS, pronounced attack-ums), which Ukraine has already been using in Russian-occupied territory, has a relatively limited range of about 190 miles, but that would put a lot of Russian bases, ammunition storage areas and logistical hubs in range. It could be an advantage to blunt the counteroffensive Russia is about to start. The North Koreans are supposed to be deployed there.

It was something he would have done, given that Russia would be starting a war with 10,000 North Korean troops, and that they just launched their largest air attack on Ukraine in months.

Before leaving office, President Biden can’t do anything for the Ukrainians if he doesn’t allow American missiles to be fired into Russian territory. That makes for dodgy optics, because it saddles an incoming administration with a policy shift Biden himself long resisted because he thought it carried too great a risk of plunging America into a direct confrontation with Russia.

A U.S. official confirmed to NPR that Russia had its first use of the Army Tactical Missile System from the U.S.

The barrage appears to be the result of the Biden administration’s decision — which NPR and other news outlets have reported — to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of sophisticated long-range Western weaponry to target inside Russia.

If reports are true, Russia and the United States would have a conflict as the U.S. approves to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia.

The new doctrine, which Putin announced in September, would consider a conventional-weapons attack by a nonnuclear state that’s supported by a nuclear-armed nation as a joint attack on Russia that could meet the conditions for a nuclear response.

The news of possible Ukrainian strikes, and the updated nuclear doctrine by Russia, are about two months away from President-elect Donald Trump taking office.

Donald Trump decried the amount of U.S. aid for Ukraine, and said he wanted to negotiate a end to the war with Moscow.