The U.S. decision to authorise long-range Ukrainian strikes could help Kyiv defend the foothold in Russia’s Kursk region that it seized as leverage in any war talks, but may come too late to change the course of the war, analysts said.
Two months before leaving office, President Joe Biden lifted some restrictions that have blocked Kyiv from using U.S.-supplied weapons for strikes deeper into Russian territory,
in a major policy change, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Military analysts said the impact on the battlefield, where Ukraine has been on the back foot for months, would depend on what limits remained. But while the shift may shore up the Kursk operation, it was unlikely to be a game changer overall.
“The decision comes late, and like other decisions in this vein, it may be too late to substantially change the course of the fighting,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
“Long-range strikes were always one piece of the puzzle, and had been overly freighted with expectations in this war.”
There also is no way to know how long the new policy will last. It was criticised by Richard Grenell, one of the closest foreign policy advisors of returning president Donald Trump, who replaces Biden on Jan. 20.
Trump has long criticised the scale of U.S. aid to Kyiv and has vowed to end the war quickly, without saying how. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russian forces, which have been on the offensive for more than a year, have been advancing at their fastest rate since 2022 in eastern Ukraine and exerting pressure in the northeast and southeast.
Russia says Ukraine cannot fire the missiles at targets inside Russia without direct help from NATO allies, calling this a major escalation. On Monday, the Kremlin said any such decision would mean the United States was directly involved in the conflict.
The first Ukrainian strikes could happen in the coming days and are likely to be carried out using ATACMS rockets, which have a range of up to 306 km, Reuters reported.
A central European defence official told Reuters the strikes would give Kyiv a greater chance to defend itself from aerial attacks, but would not decisively swing the conflict in
Ukraine’s favour.
Russia had already moved many of its air assets beyond the reach of Western weapons in Ukraine, the official said, although the range would cover beyond the area of Kursk occupied by Ukraine.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said he was “not opening champagne just yet” as it was unknown how many rockets the Ukrainians had and whether they had enough to impact the battlefield.
The decision to authorise the strikes only after months of Ukrainian lobbying follows a pattern repeated throughout the war as the Biden administration tried to balance its support for Ukraine with concern about escalation.
