The transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a nearly 200-mile range ends a yearslong drama between Washington and Kyiv.
U.S. Army soldiers conduct live fire testing of early versions of the Army Tactical Missile System at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on Dec. 14, 2021. | John Hamilton/U.S. Army via APThe Biden administration last month secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for the first time in the two-year war — and Kyiv has already used the weapon twice to strike deep behind Russian lines.
The provision of the long-range version of the ATACMS ends a lengthy drama in which Ukraine clamored for years to receive the weapon, driving a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. The U.S. quietly sent the medium-range version of the missile in October, but Ukraine continued to press for a weapon that would allow it to strike farther behind Russia’s lines.
The Biden administration believes providing ATACMS can give Ukraine some new momentum in the two-year war, forcing Russia to move back critical command and control nodes and other high-value targets such as aviation assets, said the second U.S. official. “There’s no silver bullet weapon that’s going to change the character of the battlefield,” the official said, but: “Ukraine’s got something in their toolkit that they can use at a time in place of their choosing, that creates impact, that gives them an advantage.”
But now having long-range ATACMS in its arsenal allows Ukraine to threaten Russian assets inside the whole of Crimea as well as the Black Sea Fleet. The transfer could also boost morale among
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