7/10/2023 0 Comments Youtube something in the air![]() The missiles reportedly were modified so they cannot target sites inside Russia. The Ukrainian military has had the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, since last June and resisted the temptation to launch its 50-mile-range rockets against targets in Russia. The Ukrainians would like to get the 200-mile range Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, which would allow them to strike Russian targets anywhere in occupied Ukraine. However, Kyiv has indicated that it will play by those rules, at least when it uses Western-provided weapons. It is an absurd war in which the Russian military can hit targets, military or civilian, throughout Ukraine while seeking to somehow bar Ukraine from striking targets in Russia. As Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on February 5, “We always emphasize to our Western partners that we will not use Western weapons on the territory of the Russian Federation.” His second red line was that “NATO countries do not supply long-range missiles for strikes deep into the territory of the Russian Federation.” This question also does not arise. and NATO policy remains well short of the first red line described by Arbatov. ![]() Indeed, Ukraine has not asked for Western troops, just weapons. Nothing suggests the West’s position on this has changed, even as the war drags on and the list of Russian war crimes grows. It would have required that NATO pilots be prepared to shoot down Russian aircraft and to attack Russian surface-to-air missile sites, perhaps in Russia itself. That explains why the idea of a no-fly zone over Ukraine encountered such resistance one year ago. He described the first as “NATO countries are not directly involved in the conflict, although they supply weapons, and Russia does not strike at NATO countries.”īiden, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and other NATO leaders have repeatedly said that they would not send U.S. In a February 2023 interview, Russian foreign and security policy expert Alexei Arbatov addressed the question of Moscow’s red lines, which he also qualified as tacit. In the early weeks of the war, tacit rules appeared to have developed between the West and Russia regarding military assistance to Ukraine. One factor complicating that calculation: The Kremlin has provided no clear specifics as to what it regards as unacceptable. The trick for Washington and other NATO members providing military aid to Ukraine has been to calculate how far they can go without crossing a red line that would trigger a direct NATO-Russia clash. Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.” He has also made clear his second goal in another speech on March 11: “We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. and Western support has increased as the Ukrainian military demonstrated its ability to stand up to the Russian army. President Joe Biden reiterated his support for Ukraine in a February 21 speech in Warsaw, the day after he had made a quick visit to Kyiv. However, in balancing the two, the administration has taken an unnecessarily cautious approach. policy regarding the war: first, help Ukraine prevail and defeat Russia militarily and second, avoid a direct military clash between NATO and Russia. Since the beginning of Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, Biden administration officials have voiced two primary goals for U.S. ![]() and Western military assistance to Kyiv that would not cross the lines that appear to have emerged over the past year. The Kremlin’s red lines - never clearly articulated - appear less stringent than some in the West evidently believe.
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