The Ukrainian advance into Russia’s Kursk region has put renewed pressure on the U.S. to lift a policy that restricts Kyiv from using American-made weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.
The restriction, if lifted, could help Ukraine advance further into Kursk and hold the territory that troops have gained by using long-range artillery like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to hit airfields and logistical hubs.
The Kursk advance has also shattered a Kremlin message — that advancing and attacking inside of Russia is a red line and an escalation — threats that have long held the U.S. back from approving long-range strike capabilities.
Russia has not responded to the Kursk attack with any new escalation of its own, leading Ukrainians to push for the lifting of the long-range strike restriction.
Steven Horrell, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said one potential objective of the Kursk attack is to prove there are no more red lines in the war. He argued the U.S. should lift the restriction.
“The fact that we’ve put handcuffs on Ukraine’s use of the capabilities we’ve given to them has been just a product of us being overly cautious,” he said. “We say as long as it takes [but] we just sort of trickle capabilities to them. ‘OK, we’ll let you defend yourselves. We’ll save a few lives, but we’re afraid [of escalation].’ It’s very much intertwined with this excessive fear of escalation.”
Surprise offensive
The push into Kursk is part of a wide-ranging surprise offensive intended to divert Russian troops from the front lines of eastern Ukraine, create a buffer zone to protect against border attacks and to destroy military assets, while taking prisoners and territory for potential exchanges.
Ukrainian troops caught Russia by surprise in the lightning Aug. 6 attack, and they continue to advance, taking some 500 square miles of territory and capturing 92 settlements, including the key town of Sudzha, last week. They have also destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym River that will cripple Russian efforts to resupply and reinforce.
But Ukrainian forces struggle against Russia’s precision-guided glide bombs, and officials argue it is vital to lift all restrictions on the use of weapons to protect troops from air attacks. Lifting the restrictions could also prevent Russian reserve forces from reinforcing positions in Kursk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Monday speech that long-range strikes were also instrumental in beating back Russian advances across a 600-mile front, most recently around the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk in the Donetsk region.
“We need sufficient range to defend Ukraine from Russian missiles and guided aerial bombs, to prevent the transfer of Russian troops, and to counter the occupier’s pressure on key front lines,” he said. “Ukraine is separated from halting the advance of the Russian army on the front by only one decision we await from our partners: the decision on long-range capabilities.”
Zelensky also said if the restriction were lifted, his troops might not even need to advance into Russia to establish a buffer zone free of Russian weapons that can attack into Ukraine.
Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center think tank, which advises Kyiv, said Ukraine needs the ability to protect against glide bombs and secure artillery units with ATACMS, which can target fighter jets and ballistic missile launch areas.
“The fact that they are advancing [in Kursk] doesn’t mean that they are not being bombed like every minute,” he said. “We need, again, to push the Russian aviation and missiles away from the Ukrainian troops there.”
Skrypchenko said ATACMS hitting deeper into Russia could also “eliminate problems for the civilian population in Ukraine” by taking out Russian capabilities.
The U.S. has not budged. Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder reiterated Tuesday that the policy stands.
“Conducting counterfire, defensive operations across the border is permitted, and I’ll just leave it at that,” Ryder said.
On Capitol Hill, however, some lawmakers are also renewing a push to get the U.S. to reverse the policy.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said lifting the restriction was important to counter Russia’s advantage with mass on the battlefield, such as with artillery.
“Ukraine is finally in a position where they can hold Russia accountable,” he told CBS on Sunday, and lifting restrictions “can change the dynamic on the ground.”
Changed tunes
The Biden administration has changed tunes on several policies before, including providing Ukraine with weapons like ATACMS that were previously viewed as escalatory.
In May, after Russia launched a major offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province, Washington gave Kyiv permission to strike into Russian territory so long as the move related to a crossborder attack.
But the U.S. is hesitant to allow Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia, which would ostensibly give Kyiv the ability to hit Moscow.
Robert Murrett, a retired U.S. vice admiral, said Ukraine “almost exclusively” goes after military targets rather than political ones.
“As long as you’re going after legitimate military targets, there’s kind of a recognition that those are not viewed as escalatory,” said Murrett, now a professor at Syracuse University.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has laid out multiple red lines that have already been crossed, and it’s unlikely he can escalate the war any further on the battlefield outside of nuclear weapons, which carry enormous political risk for Moscow if deployed.
Zelensky said Monday that Putin has no options left to escalate and the Kursk offensive has proved “there is no single rational reason to deny us true power, true long-range capabilities.”
“We are now witnessing a significant ideological shift,” he said, “namely, the whole naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled these days somewhere near Sudzha.”
Dmytro Zhmailo, executive director of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, said the “threat of escalation has actually no basis,” and that view has been reinforced by Ukrainian military intelligence.
Zhmailo added that the U.S. would likely lift the restriction eventually but potentially far too late for Kyiv’s hopes.
“We don’t have time because every day we pay a big price for this war,” he said. “We, of course, want to see it sooner than later.”
Ukraine has already hit Moscow, and attacked the Kremlin, with drones. Some of its long-range drones have been employed with savvy use, hitting targets like oil depots hundreds of miles within Russia.
But ATACMS are much more powerful and precise, said Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst at the Finnish-based Black Bird Group.
“Drones aren’t really a substitute for the missile,” he said. “It’s more difficult … for the Russian air defense to actually do anything about these missiles.”
Even if the restriction were lifted, some of Ukraine’s larger goals rely on other factors.
Kastehelmi explained Ukraine is unlikely to advance much deeper into Kursk without a larger force, and Russia likely won’t divert enough troops from the front lines to make a difference.
“There’s no single weapon system that could decisively shift the battlefield,” he said.
The U.S., the de facto leader of a group of some 50 nations supporting Ukraine, appears to have also influenced other nations from not allowing Ukraine to use their weapons systems to strike deep into Russia.
British newspapers reported that the U.K. was waiting for approval from the U.S. before allowing its long-range Storm Shadow missiles to be fired deeper into Russia.
Other nations such as Germany and France are also holding back, though Berlin has yet to even provide its long-range Taurus missiles.
The U.S. has paved the way for other nations to lift restrictions before, including when it provided Abrams tanks to Ukraine in early 2023, which gave Germany the green light to send its Leopards.
Horrell, of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said Western leaders are looking at “U.S. hesitancy and feeding their own hesitancy.”
“The U.S. restrictions absolutely feed into other nations moving slowly or half-stepping or matching our restrictions with their own,” he said. “U.S. restrictions, U.S. hesitancy, U.S. excessive fear of escalation, is contagious within NATO.”