Ukraine leader barnstorms in US for OK to hit Russia with long-range missiles

(Originally published Sept. 23 in “What in the World“) Israel and Hezbollah stepped up their cross-border attacks, with Israel sending dozens of warplanes into southern Lebanon to carry out air strikes.

Israel said its strikes would continue until it was safe for residents of northern Israel to return home without fear of being bombarded by Hezbollah’s rockets. That seemed unlikely to happen soon, as Hezbollah responded by expanding the range of its rocket strikes farther south into Israel and vowed to keep fighting until there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

As air and drone strikes in Ukraine climb to record levels, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy urged the White House to show the “nerve and guts” needed to let Ukraine use British long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles against targets inside Russia. The U.K. can’t play its customary role of threatening to hand Ukraine weapons whether Washington wants it or not: because the Storm Shadows contain American-made components, their use is apparently subject to U.S. approval.

The Administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is also considering whether to allow Kyiv to use long-range U.S. Atacm missiles against designated military targets in Russia. While the decision appears to have been all but made, the White House has reached a delicate moment. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat that giving the green light would be a declaration of war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is ringing in their ears. And while Putin has made such threats before, his renewed threat of an expanded war comes just 42 days before U.S. presidential elections.

With polls still indicating a close race, Democrats can’t afford a miscalculation that throws votes to Donald Trump, who has vowed to somehow end the war if elected before even being inaugurated. So while the White House’s accusation that Iran had begun shipping missiles to Moscow might have served as the necessary pretext for lifting the long-range missile ban, Putin’s warning appears to have sent it searching for a more egregious Russian action that can buttress American public support for a war that has already cost it $55.6 billion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in the U.S. barnstorming in the swing state of Pennsylvania for support ahead of an address at the United Nations Tuesday and meetings with Biden later this week.

Polls back in August suggested that American public support for U.S. aid to Ukraine was at its highest in a year, with more Republicans agreeing with Democrats that the U.S. should support Ukraine for as long as it takes to defeat Russia. But those polls were conducted before Ukraine’s Kursk incursion and Putin’s threat against letting it use long-range missiles.

The White House may be dreaming up an alternative: sending Ukraine Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or Jassms, instead of Atacms. It was already considering sending the Jassms as part of its Atacm approval. The Jassms can only travel half as far as the Atacms, but they can also conceivably be fired by Ukraine’s F-16s from the safety of Ukrainian air space. The Jassms may, therefore, be included in the next, $375 million weapons package for Kyiv under the Presidential Drawdown Authority. That means they will be supplied from the Pentagon’s existing arsenal.

Sending Jassms would enable the U.S. to beef up Kyiv’s weaponry without ceding market share to the Storm Shadow’s European manufacturers. Whether that would placate the U.K., or Ukraine, is another matter.

The U.S, meanwhile, is beefing up its naval presence in Alaska in response to an increase in joint military exercises between China and Russia in the Arctic Ocean and North Pacific.