For months, Kyiv has lobbied Washington for the advanced Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) as Ukraine seeks to drive the Russian army out of its territory, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
In early September, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, expressed Kyiv’s wish in a single-word tweet:
ATACMS
The ATACMS is a GPS guided surface-to-surface missile with a warhead filled with almost 100 kg of explosive material, according to the PAP news agency.
Fired from the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) or the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), the weapon can strike targets up to 300 km away. And so it has a much bigger range and firepower than the GMLRS rockets currently used by Ukrainian forces, PAP reported.
When Ukraine sent its weapons wish list to US congressmen last week, the ATACMS was right on top, it said.
Yet so far, President Joe Biden’s administration has refused to provide Kyiv with the system, for reasons that are not entirely clear, according to the Polish news agency.
US declines to send ATACMS to Ukraine
Over the past few weeks, PAP has asked several White House officials about why ATACMS had not been delivered to Ukraine, each time receiving a different answer.
Ned Price, the spokesman for the US Department of State, did not rule out that ATACMS would be sent to Ukraine, but added that weapons deliveries were tailored to the current needs of the Ukrainian army, according to PAP.
Meanwhile, US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Colin Kahl told PAP that Ukraine did not need ATACMS as most targets were within the range of the GMLRS rockets which Kyiv is using “to deadly effect.”
According to Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, “ATACMS would be absolutely useful to Ukrainians,” just as HIMARS have been, but the Biden administration has long indicated to the Russians that it would not provide Kyiv with long-range weapons.
By keeping its pledge, the US demonstrates that it is taking a responsible approach to the threat of escalation, the analyst from the Philadelphia-based think tank told the Polish news agency.
Delivery of ATACMS could lead to 'third world war’: Sullivan
In July, US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, stated that Washington was ruling out ATACMS because they could escalate the conflict and lead the United States towards “a third world war,” PAP reported.
Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said last week that for Moscow, the delivery of the ATACMS system to Ukraine would mean that a “red line” has been crossed, according to PAP.
Meanwhile, US Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois has told the news agency that Washington’s refusal to send ATACMS to Kyiv suggests that someone in the Biden administration is afraid of provoking Russia.
At the same time, Kinzinger said that his assessment of Biden’s policy towards Ukraine so far was generally positive.
According to Daniel Fried, a former US ambassador to Poland, Washington could do more in terms of weapons supplies to Ukraine.
Fried said that no US official had reiterated Sullivan’s statement on ATACMS, adding that Washington’s red lines with regard to military assistance have evolved in the course of the war.
The ex-diplomat said that not long ago, the White House had been ruling out the delivery of MIG fighter planes to Ukraine.
Yet now, the United States is openly raising the possibility of sending Western fighter aircraft to Kyiv, Fried said, as quoted by the PAP news agency.
Monday is day 236 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, CNN