After months of pleading from President Zelensky, Western nations are finally tipped to lift their restrictions on using their long-range cruise missiles outside of Ukraine’s borders to strike military targets deep inside Russia. They will likely take the decision during an upcoming summit in Washington later on Friday, September 13th.
When news broke that the U.S. and Britain were considering the move, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a last-minute attempt to scare them into backing down by reiterating that as soon Kyiv targets Russia with Western weaponry, Russia will be at war with the West.
“If this decision is made, it will mean nothing other than the direct participation of NATO countries … in the war in Ukraine,” Putin said on Thursday night. “And this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia.”
And therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike at Russia with these weapons or not to allow them. It is about deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict or not.
But if media sources are correct, the UK has already moved to remove its restrictions and allow Ukraine to use its Franco-British-made Storm Shadow missiles however it pleases, even though the government tried to keep the decision under wraps. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently implied that the U.S. will soon follow suit with its own cruise missiles, the ATACMS.
Both these weapon systems are precision-guided long-range missiles that use real-time satellite data to correct their course mid-flight and strike their target hundreds of kilometers away. Storm Shadows have an effective range of 250 km, while ATACMS can hit targets up to 300 km away. Regardless whether it’s the British or the American missile, the navigational data it uses during complex operations is usually provided by the Pentagon, making the U.S. complicit anyway.
If London and Washington officially take the step, they could also be followed by Paris and Berlin, the two other capitals that have donated similar weapons to Ukraine in the past. Holding out for France would be effectively pointless, as theirs are the same Storm Shadows as the ones the UK donated, so Kyiv would probably use them anyway.
But Germany’s Taurus missiles—potentially the most powerful of the lot with a range of up to 500 kilometers, capable of reaching the outskirts of Moscow—are a different question entirely. Germany has traditionally been the most reluctant to step over Russia’s red lines for fear of escalation before, but nonetheless, it has eventually done so every single time.
Friday’s summit between President Biden and British PM Sir Keir Starmer in the White House is meant to flesh out the details on how to proceed, with the plan to publicly present a final deal during the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York later this month.
While lifting these restrictions was considered unthinkable by most allies just a few months ago, Western strategic dialogue shifted significantly after it was revealed that Iran was supplying Russia with cruise missiles of its own. Now it’s not a question of whether to lift restrictions, but how to make sure the situation will not escalate out of proportion.
“The wrangle now is over what targets Ukraine will be permitted to strike inside Russia, and how far inside,” an unnamed Baltic defense official explained. “And there are worries still in Washington that filtering what can and can’t be targeted drags the U.S. into war-planning, something they are keen to avoid being seen as involved in.”
