Ukraine fires US long-range missiles at Russia. What that means for the war.

After more than a year of lobbying by Ukraine, President Joe Biden in the final weeks of his term has approved Kyiv’s use of U.S. long-range missiles to hit inside Russia.

Ukraine reportedly began using the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, Tuesday in a strike against a military facility on Russian soil, about 80 miles from the border.

It’s an effort to blunt a large-scale attack being prepared by Moscow, reportedly to eject Ukrainian forces from the Russian region of Kursk.

Some 11,000 North Korean troops have been moved into the area, Pentagon officials said Monday. They could be joined by an estimated 40,000 Russian forces.

Analysts are now debating what, exactly, long-range missiles launched into Russia will be able to accomplish at this point in the war, and whether it’s a dangerous escalation that could usher in “drastic consequences,” as Russia has warned.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September that a U.S. green light for cross-border strikes “will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.” On Tuesday, the Kremlin changed its official doctrine to permit the use of nuclear weapons following a conventional attack, if the attacking country is backed by nuclear powers.

Yet it was Russia’s decision to bring North Korean forces into the war that represented a red-line escalation to which the Biden administration felt compelled to respond, U.S. officials have said.

It’s clear, too, that as President-elect Donald Trump’s victory portends stepped-up pressure on Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war, the move is also one last effort to give Kyiv more bargaining leverage when it comes to the table.

It is a move that Mr. Trump could use to his strategic advantage, as Russia, with an eye on positioning itself ahead of the U.S.’s Inauguration Day, is intensifying its own punishing attacks on Ukraine.

“For a Trump administration, this is actually a gift from the Biden administration,” says retired Lt. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe. “The Biden administration has made the hard decision, finally, to do this. Trump could just leave it in place as leverage.”

How Ukraine can use ATACMS

Long-range ATACMS (pronounced “attack-’ems”) can travel up to 190 miles. The strikes Tuesday were reportedly launched against a military facility near the city of Karachev in the Bryansk region.

The facility, which has come under Ukrainian drone attack in the past, was an arsenal for, among other weapons, North Korean artillery shells, anti-aircraft missiles, and ammunition for multiple launch rocket systems, according to a member of Ukraine’s defense council.

Russia’s big advantage in the war has been the number of its forces, which amounts to the tens of thousands of troops that it deploys in human attack waves. Some 1,200 Russian soldiers are killed or injured in the war each day, according to the Pentagon.

But these waves of largely untrained troops also represent an Achilles’ heel. They require Russia to use lots of artillery to wear down Ukrainian defenses before sending in the forces. These troops also need an engaged headquarters to direct and coordinate the artillery and the timing of attacks.

“There’s not a lot of decision-making going on at the lowest tactical level,” Mr. Hodges says. Destroying headquarters and artillery supplies helps “neuter the advantage of mass” that Moscow has, particularly now that it appears to have access to North Korean troops to send into its human waves.

And so the key is using ATACMS to help destroy strategic sites – “in other words, where the Russians bring up artillery munitions and dump it in big piles by the side of a railroad somewhere, then it gets moved forward by truck,” Mr. Hodges says. “OK, well when you find these kind of sites, that’s what you want to hit.”

Though Russia has moved its airfields out of air range for the ATACMS, hundreds of artillery depots and headquarters remain reachable, the Institute for the Study of War think tank notes in an interactive map.

“We need to double down,” Ukraine ally says

More broadly, Mr. Biden’s permission to use long-range missiles appears to provide political cover, too, for France and the United Kingdom to follow suit by officially authorizing Kyiv to use their own long-range Storm Shadow missiles in Russia.

“I’ve been really clear for a long time now, we need to double down,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at the G20 summit this week.

“We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.”

France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot added that it was something his country “would consider if it was to allow Ukraine to strike targets from where Russians are currently aggressing Ukrainian territory.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said he will still not allow Ukraine to use his country’s long-range Taurus missiles, but with national elections scheduled for February, Mr. Biden’s green light could allow the next chancellor to follow France and Britain’s lead.

Analysts have downplayed Russian threats, in part because the Kremlin has been complaining since June that the U.S. was allowing Ukraine to use the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, inside Russia. Despite many veiled threats, including the change of doctrine this week, Mr. Putin is unlikely to use a tactical nuclear weapon, since that could jeopardize his hope for a good deal in any Ukraine negotiation once Mr. Trump takes office.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for his part, has acknowledged the growing pressure to bring the war to an end.

His country “must do everything to ensure that the war ends next year through diplomatic means,” he said Friday.