Should Ukraine Launch Western Weapons Deep Into Russia?

President Biden has refused to allow Ukraine to use long-range Western missiles on Russian military targets, but he appears to be wavering.

A deadly uptick of Russian guided glide bombs slamming into Ukrainian cities — as many as 800 in a single week this summer — has injected new urgency into a long-running debate over whether Ukraine should be allowed to launch missiles supplied by the West at military targets deep in Russian territory.

Amid signs that President Biden is wavering, the issue will be on the table when he meets in Washington on Friday with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, after the two leaders dispatched their top diplomats to Kyiv on Wednesday to hear out the latest pleas from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine has for months asked to use Western long-range weapons to attack more of the military sites that Russia uses to launch missiles and house the warplanes that drop the large, free-fall glide bombs that are wreaking havoc on Ukrainian forces and cities.

This past spring, Mr. Biden put specific limits — around 60 miles — on how far Ukraine can fire American-made weapons into Russia, leery of spurring a harsh retaliation from President Vladimir V. Putin.

U.S. officials said Britain and France, which gave Ukraine long-range, air-launched “bunker busters” in 2023, appear to be waiting for Mr. Biden’s endorsement before allowing those European missiles to hit targets far into Russian territory. The officials, like other U.S. officials interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, warned on Wednesday that Russia was preparing “appropriate countermeasures” should the West extend Ukraine’s authority, RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news agency, reported.

But earlier presumed provocations that the Biden administration resisted — including sending Western tanks and F-16s to the fight, as well as Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, a Russian border region — have not prompted a Russian retaliation against NATO.

And Mr. Zelensky is now pushing for the permissions on a near-daily basis.

“Terror can be reliably stopped only in one way: by strikes on Russian military airfields, on their bases, on the logistics of Russian terror,” Mr. Zelensky said on Sunday. “We have to achieve this.”

Mr. Biden is also facing pressure in American foreign policy circles to loosen the restrictions. Senior American military planners no longer advise against doing so, and high-ranking former U.S. diplomats and generals urged him in a letter on Tuesday to “let Ukraine defend itself.”

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, noted the recent escalation in Russian airstrikes on Wednesday. “The time has come to ease restrictions on Ukrainians’ use of U.S.-provided weapons,” he said.

But another U.S. official cautioned that no imminent change in the restrictions was expected. And, ultimately, the decision rests with Mr. Biden.

“We’re working that out right now,” Mr. Biden told reporters on Tuesday.

Here is how Ukraine could use that broader authority.

“Attack ’ems”

Right now, it appears Mr. Biden is weighing whether to allow Ukraine to fire the American-made surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems — known as ATACMS, or “attack ’ems” — into Russia.

The United States first gave Kyiv the ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, last year. But as of yet, they are not among the limited weapons that the Biden administration is allowing Ukraine to launch into Russia.

In May, Mr. Biden reluctantly agreed to let Ukraine fire some U.S.-supplied weapons, like artillery, into Russia to target military bases that were used to launch attacks on the Ukrainian border, including against the city of Kharkiv. That authority extended about 60 miles.

But U.S. and European military officials now say Russia has since moved 90 percent of the air bases that house its bomber jets out of the range that ATACMS could reach, in anticipation that they will soon be fired over the border.

“A missed chance to attack them, when they were still in range,” said Col. Markus Reisner, who oversees force development at Austria’s main military training academy and closely follows how weapons are being used in the war in Ukraine.

Experts say the ATACMS could also target Russian ground-based air-defense systems that threaten Ukraine’s nascent fleet of F-16 fighter jets.

F-16s

The first tranche of American-made F-16s — Ukraine will not say how many, but believed to number around a dozen — arrived this summer. While Ukrainian officials say they will initially be used for air defense, like shooting down incoming Russian cruise missiles, it is expected the F-16s will also fly combat missions.When used in a ground-attack role, the fighter jets have a range of about 500 miles, according to the Air Force.

The F-16s could play a crucial role against the guided glide bombs that have pummeled population centers and military posts in eastern Ukraine. Experts said that Ukraine wants to use the F-16s to intercept Russian warplanes to prevent them from releasing the glide bombs.

The glide bombs, many of which are old warheads that have been refitted with pop-out wings and satellite navigation systems, are dropped dozens of miles from the border — outside the reach of Ukraine’s short-range surface-to-air missiles.

But it remains unclear whether Ukraine will fly the F-16s into Russian territory, and the NATO countries that donated the jets are divided over whether they should.

But if they were to cross the border, they could target Russian aircraft with medium-range missiles known as AMRAAMs that the United States has already sent to Ukraine. Depending on the model, AMRAAMS can be fired both from an airborne F-16 and a ground-based air-defense launching system. According to the Air Force, the missiles can reach targets more than 30 miles away.

JASSMs, Storm Shadows and SCALPs

The Biden administration is also poised to give Ukraine air-launched cruise missiles that can be used with the F-16s. The weapons, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs, are older models, but they have a range of about 230 miles and carry a 1,000-pound warhead. They could strike targets — like air bases and ammunition depots — deep into Russian territory without leaving Ukrainian airspace.

But a U.S. official said that even if the U.S. decided to send JASSMs to Ukraine, they would not be delivered for months. And it remains unclear if the Biden administration would allow the JASSMs to be launched into Russia, as opposed to Crimea and other parts of Ukraine that are controlled by Russia.

Britain and France have already sent Ukraine their own air-launched cruise missiles that, so far, have struck Russian targets in Crimea and in the Black Sea. They have a range of about 155 miles and have been fired from Ukraine’s aging fleet of Soviet-era and Russian-designed fighter jets. Virtually the same model of missile, they are known as Storm Shadows in Britain and SCALPs in France.

Ukraine is already able to strike deep inside Russia using domestically produced drones and is testing a new long-range surface-to-surface missile that can be fired without asking the West’s permission. That domestic production capability has been one reason the Biden administration has resisted allowing American weapons to be used for those attacks.

Yet when it comes to combating the glide bombs in particular, American officials and experts said that Ukraine will need to strike deep into Russia with a mix of fighter jets and ground-based air systems — nearly all of which will require Western approval.

“As Ukraine gains new Western arms and technologies, it can better address the threat,” John Hoehn and William Courtney, munitions experts and former U.S. officials, wrote in an analysis for the RAND Corporation in June. “But the West will also need to show more flexibility in the conditions it sets for Ukraine’s use of advanced weaponry.”

Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and John Ismay contributed reporting.