Biden allows Ukraine to use U.S. arms to strike inside Russia
President Joe Biden's administration will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, three sources told Reuters.
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Good news, but why did it take nearly three years?
The ATACMS, Patriots, F16, modern tanks should have been delivered in the first 12 months to strike russia when they were less organized.
What happened, is American aide to Ukraine is about to end in January, due to the Trump administration taking over. Plus, aide was likely waiting until the end of the American election system in hopes Democrats won, so less for the Republican side to complain about.
I think the issue has been that Russia has stated that the US not having limits on the use of their supplied weapons would be seen as a US escalation of the war. And that becomes tricky because Ukraine is not a NATO country, but Russia drawing the US into the war would bring are NATO allies in as well potentially allowing WW3 (although for Trump it would be only WW2).
That's meaningless. Russia can call it an act of war all they want, it doesn't actually do anything. The only way for the US to get "drawn into" the war is for Russia to directly attack a NATO country, which there is literally zero chance of Russia doing, because if they can't win a war against a single country being funded and supplied by NATO, how the fuck would they ever have a chance to prevail against the real thing?
Nukes. The hesitation is always about who is unhinged enough to actually fire a nuke.
What benefit does Russia get from escalating to nuclear weapons?
Putin wants to be alive, and have a country to be in charge of. Ukrainian aggression forcing a peace that's more favorable to them doesn't cost him either of those things. Deploying nuclear weapons against NATO does.
It's not about whether or not Putin is willing to use nuclear weapons in the abstract. It's about whether he would actually derive any benefit from doing so.
Putin is old, if Putin has a health condition which significantly shortens his immediate life span we can all see him saying "fuck it" and press that button.
We just have to hope for some kind of takeover by younger ambitious dictators at that point to recognise they want to live and stop him
You honestly think that every single person around Putin is ready to burn in nuclear fire for his sake?
No, that's the entire point of my second sentence.
Also remember that Russia has North Korea and China on its side (among others - the dictators Trump loves). Without nukes to kill everyone, that's a YEARS long war of attrition.
Also the idea of the US giving Ukraine weapons is to defend itself, so long range missiles for the sole purpose of striking the Russian interior could look to some like the US attacking Russia by proxy. And we don't want to be in a war, especially one that would surely become a World War. Trump is going to "end the war in a day" though so this discussion is really just moot anyway.
Russia has been claiming that they are functionally at war with all of NATO for the last two years. Did that result in all out nuclear war?
If not, why would this be any different?
Because Biden and the rest of the leadership are a bunch of Cold War fossil fucks.
nearly three years
Try 10 years
This whole shit show kicked off with Russia invading Crimea back in 2014 and it's been going on ever since.
Yes, it escalated in a big way a couple of years ago, but if someone were to, for example, invade Florida, we'd consider that to be the unquestionable start of a war, not 8 years later when they tried to move beyond Florida and attack the rest of the country.
Agreed. I am Ukrainian. Family had to leave Donbas in 2014.
Yes, arming Ukraine in 2014 with ballistic missiles (among other things) and authorizing strikes deep into russian territory would have been not only the right thing to do, but also a key requirement of the Budapest memorandum.
My comment was more in the context of real weapon deliveries only starting since the full scale invasion.
I remember how the Germans put a big stink when Ukraine started using the Bayraktar drones in the line of contact in Donbas before the full scale invasion. What a bunch of spineless cowards.
He needed it to be too late before doing too little.
