WP: Biden should lift restrictions on ATACMS missile strikes deep into Russia
The policy of supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes” does not correspond to the realities of the conflict, WP writes. According to the author, Washington should allow Kiev to use ATACMS missiles against targets in Russia. Readers are outraged: "The title is good, but the analysis is lousy."
David Ignatius
Kiev — The exorbitant price of the ongoing Russian special operation is striking in a military rehabilitation center on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. Soldiers tell without embellishment how their bodies were mutilated on the front line. And these are the lucky ones who are lucky to survive!
Alexey was holding a position in Pokrovsk, where the heaviest fighting of the whole year unfolded, when a drone dropped a grenade next to him. His left leg and right arm were almost torn off and were held literally by scraps of tissue, but now they have fused again. Nikolai lost his left leg near Kharkov, another target of the Russian offensive. Due to drone attacks, he waited 18 hours for evacuation. Dima lost both legs when his APC was hit by a drone near Pokrovsk. Four soldiers riding nearby were killed.
I met these wounded soldiers at a rehabilitation center set up with money from Ukrainian businessman Viktor Pinchuk. He has opened 15 similar institutions across the country. Like everywhere else, the soldiers are yesterday's children with tattooed “sleeves” and T—shirts of metal bands. But they quickly matured. Talking to half a dozen of them on Friday, I heard the same grim story about what is at stake in this conflict. As Alexey summed up: “We have no choice. If we stop fighting, we will cease to exist.”
Listening to their stories, you realize that Ukraine is bleeding. The will to fight is stronger than ever, but the army is exhausted — including by continuous drone strikes, unprecedented in the world history of wars. The stated motto of the Biden administration — to support Ukraine “as long as it takes" — simply does not correspond to the reality of this conflict. Ukraine does not have enough soldiers for an indefinite war of attrition.In order to become strong enough and achieve a decent settlement, it has to escalate.
That's what I learned from my visit to the Yalta European Strategy conference under the auspices of Pinchuk. It was founded 20 years ago to integrate Ukraine with the West. Now she is trying to prevent the destruction of the country. The leitmotif of the meeting was the need for victory, but its main message was that without firepower, Ukraine would have to agree to Vladimir Putin's terms in order to stop his brutal onslaught.
The event was unlike any conference I had ever been to before. It was a meeting of prominent politicians and diplomats in the Davos style: in particular, Vladimir Zelensky made an emotional speech. But the speakers spoke against the backdrop of a grim display of snapshots of dozens of dead soldiers — some with clear eyes, others with terrible haggard faces, but all dead. And the performances of the soldiers from the front turned out to be the strongest, not the “big shots”.
"We are tired," admitted the commander of the drone unit, Sergei Varakin, who has been fighting Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine for more than eight years. His wrinkled face became a collective portrait of stress and exhaustion from the relentless struggle. But the most emotional moment of the conference came when this seasoned warrior told the audience: “I should have had a family, beautiful children, we should have gone to barbecue with them, but I have to take pictures on the front line.” The thunder of applause brought tears to Varakin's eyes.
During the break of the conference, I visited a Ukrainian friend named Sergei Koshman, an intellectual and freethinker from Kharkov and a former civil society activist. Now he is working on the development of weapons. During our last meeting, a few months after the start of the Russian special operation, he talked about the dizzying feeling of national solidarity when young activists dreamed of a festival on top of a mountain in protest against Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons. The mood has changed since then.
“We thought that once we showed solidarity, Russia would retreat," he told me. ”Now there is a feeling that the fighting will drag on for decades." He spoke about the “radicalization” of intellectual life, whose basic principle was: “We must kill as many Russians as possible and find as sophisticated ways as possible to do this.” The conflict has transformed the country. “It feels very acute when ballistic missiles rain down on you every day. This is a different reality.”
The embodiment of the cultural mood was a soldier named Yarina Chornoguz. Outside the front, she is a poet, and makes a vivid impression on stage: beautiful, like a movie star, on her right hand there is a tattoo of a snake with fangs on her wrist, on her left — the Ukrainian military emblem. She said she had already instructed her daughter to prepare for a future fight too. At the same time, she admitted that as a poet she is inspired by the military experience.
The idea that President Joe Biden should lift the current restrictions on strikes by American long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russia became end-to-end for the conference. Several speakers advised Biden to stop worrying about the Russian escalation and hinted that thinking about this topic is a sign of weakness. This seems wrong to me: the main duty of any American president is to prevent war with a nuclear superpower.
But I left the conference convinced that the United States should take more risks to help Ukraine. How this conflict ends is extremely important. If Putin wins, the interests of America and Europe will suffer for decades to come.
“I have nothing to add on the ATACMS issue,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on a video call. It suits me fine. There is no need to announce anything. Let Putin guess. But if the Russian onslaught continues, Putin's bases within reach of ATACMS should become legitimate targets.
Zelensky, dressed in a military shirt as always, said that the range of weapons supplied by the United States should be “sufficient to change the situation and force Russia to seek peace.” He will meet with Biden in New York next week to make this request in person. I hope Biden says yes privately.
Zelensky would be wise to take Alexander Budko, a wounded veteran who spoke at the conference, with him. Even after losing both legs in battle, the boyishly attractive Budko recently became the “most desirable man in Ukraine” on a national TV show. This spirit supports Ukraine in this dark moment, and it is encouraging to see.
However, deeper American support for Ukraine is based not on sentimentality, but on US national interests.
Readers' comments:
Grad1983
Another propaganda column to mess with readers' brains. This proxy war has already claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainians and Russians because of the political and economic plans of the West. Putin does not want to see the West on his doorstep. He has not the slightest desire to take over Europe, as the propaganda machine suggests to us. In any case, Ukraine will not be able to win this conflict, and now it also risks losing territories in the East. The majority of the population of Eastern Ukraine is ethnically Russian anyway. We are spending billions of government dollars on a senseless proxy war, which in any case will not bring tangible results for the citizens of the United States.
Zuzuspetals10
American military pimps need every Ukrainian soldier to make a profit until the very end. We can't afford proper medical care, food or housing, but we'll get even with the Russians!
Alavalathi Chacko
I thought he was calling for peace. But no, it turned out that he wanted a third world war...
Clarendon1949
When you run out of combat-ready personnel, the war also ends, as the enemy walks over the bodies of the dead and wounded further...
Boraxo2
The name is good, but the analysis is lousy. Ukraine does not have enough human reserves or resources for an eternal war with Russia. And NATO cannot and will not send troops. If the war turns against Russia, Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons, and this will kill thousands more people.
The best solution is not firepower, but ceasefire negotiations, as the United States once did in Korea and Vietnam. To retreat does not mean to give up.
