“Attacks are not carried out with words; these things are not announced; the missiles will speak for themselves.” Aware that, with regard to Western support for its Army, the Castilian maxim that ‘there is a long way to go’ is generally accepted, the Ukrainian president Volodímir Zelenski did not want to get carried away by the euphoria this Monday after the announcement, made by several North American mediathat the US had authorized the kyiv Army to use long-range MGM-140 ATACMS missiles against targets on Russian territory. From his words, it is deduced that some of the restrictions imposed by the US will be maintained in the future, and that the use of said missiles on war fronts will be carried out under close supervision.
This assessment is shared by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW, for its acronym in English), an organization that has described the authorization as “limited” to the ‘oblast’ (region) of Kursk, conditions that will allow the Russian Army to “maintain some of its sanctuaries” from which to continue attacking cities and infrastructure without fear of military reprisals. “The ISW continues to assess that…the US should allow attacking all legitimate military targets within the operational rear of Russia that falls within the range of weapons provided by the US,” the think tank states.
In the event that Washington ends up lifting all the vetoes, or failing that France and the United Kingdom allow their SCAPL projectiles to be used beyond the Kursk region, decisions that, as Zelensky says, would not be announced in advance for security reasons – the question immediately arises: what would be exposed to the long-range projectiles fired from Ukraine?
Two hundred objectives
The answer is also included in an ISW report. The think tank concluded last August that more than 250 legitimate military targets They are located in the Russian rear and within the radius of action of the MGM-140 ATACMSincluding air bases, military objectives y paramilitary targets. This figure constitutes a substantial improvement regarding the current capabilities provided by the M142 HIMARS projectiles, weapons that can only reach about twenty of said potential targets. The document also rejects the version that the authorization stopped making sense when Russia decided to move its air bases outside the radius of actiongiven that “and 85%” Of the potential “non” targets are military airfields.
He first war scenario where the American long-range projectiles will be used will be the Kursk regionthe salient of Russian territory in the hands of Ukrainian troops whose control tens of thousands of soldiers are trying to recover, including thousands of North Korean soldiers, and which could be used by the kyiv authorities as an asset in an eventual negotiation. “ATACMS missiles can put high-value Russian and North Korean targets at risk; this could help the Ukrainians hold the Kursk salient, which is under pressure,” Michael Kofman, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Center in Washington, told Reuters. “Ukraine has deployed its best units there; they will be able to sustain themselves for some time if they receive enough ammunition and replacements,” he said. Robert Leehis colleague in the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
Analysts, however, rule out that the bombings could force North Korea to reconsider sending soldiers to Ukraine. “The logic of the US is delirious,” he criticized acidly. Timofiy Mylovanov, former Minister of Economy of Ukraine and currently president of the kyiv School of Economics. “If Putin considers Russian (citizens) expendable, Kim Jong-un certainly does too,” he wrote in a message on the social network 10,000 soldiers They have been sent to fight in the Ukrainian war, although Western commanders fear that Pyongyang will deploy up to 100,000. The Kremlin is trying by all means to avoid a new mobilizationknowing that the measure is unpopular among Russian citizens and could create internal problems.
Yes indeed. Among the Ukrainian population and the Russian opposition in exile, the feeling persists once again that the West, once again, is late, a delay that always ends up empowering a regime like that of Vladimir Putin. Joe Biden’s advisors in Washington have been meditating on the decision for months, without realizing that they are faced with a president who always tries to exploit the divisions and lack of decision in his interlocutors or rivals, a man who only “understands the language of strength”, he recalled Mylovanov.
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