Biden allows Ukraine to use ATACMS to strike Russia

Updated 9 p.m. ET: Ukraine can now use long-range ATACMS missiles for some strikes inside Russia, the Biden administration said Sunday, a development that Ukrainians had been seeking for months. 

Administration officials told The New York Times the missiles would “likely” first be used against Russian and North Korean forces battling Ukrainians in Kursk, but noted that Biden may allow them to be used elsewhere.

As of 9 p.m. Eastern time, Ukraine had not yet used their newly granted authorization to fire the missiles at targets inside Russia, a defense official said.

Army Tactical Missile System missiles, or ATACMS, were one of many weapons Ukraine requested at the outset of Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine. The missiles, which can be fired from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, can fly as far as 190 miles, potentially allowing Ukraine to strike Russian resupply routes. The United States has supplied  HIMARS since the first few months of the war, but has been reluctant to provide the longer-range ATACMS, saying it could prompt Russia to escalate hostilities.

Russian doctrine allows for the country’s military to treat a threat to the capital or even a supply route far from the border  as “existential,” and Russian officials had said even giving Ukrainians the missiles—much less allowing them for targets inside Russia—was a “red line.” 

However, in March, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. C.Q. Brown said the risk of escalation was “not as high,” and that same month, the White House began to send some of the longer-range missiles to Ukraine—albeit with strict limits on their use. 

The Institute for the Study of War published a series of maps to illustrate how the White House restrictions have hampered Ukraine’s ability to target Russian forces that were directly attacking Ukraine.

The decision to loosen those restrictions comes after reports that North Korea may send as many as 100,000 troops to Russia to fight Ukrainians, and after Russia launched a brutal missile assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and other targets. 

“Reminder that there are hundreds of valid, legal, legitimate, and operationally consequential military targets in range of Ukrainian ATACMS. The Biden Administration's shift to allow ATACMS use in Russia is a good thing, but it must extend beyond Kursk Oblast,” George Barros, leader of the Russia team and GEOINT team at the Institute, said on X. 

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, told The Financial Times that ATACMS will greatly improve Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian forces as they prepare to attack Ukraine: “There are targets which can only be addressed by high payload missiles such as ATACMS or equivalent aerial missiles. This is, of course, a decision giving Ukraine troops a chance, though as with many previous decisions, coming after a significant and extremely painful delay.”

The move signals a shift in Washington’s risk calculus—a shift that many, like Zagorodnyuk, argue should have come sooner. 

Sen. Roger Wicker, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is one of several Republicans who have been pressuring the administration for more than a year to give Ukraine the missiles and lift the restrictions. 

"If initial press reports are true, I am encouraged at the prospect of allowing Ukraine to use long-range ATACM missiles supplied by the U.S. This does not excuse the administration's deliberate slow-walking of items and assistance long authorized by Congress for use against Putin's illegal aggression,” Wicker, of Mississippi, said in a statement. “This devastating conflict could have been ended on terms benefiting the U.S. and NATO if Mr. Biden had listened to the counsel of bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate.”

But others in the party, such as David Sacks, a close ally of Elon Musk and Trump donor who spoke at the Republican National Convention, have taken a much different stance. “President Trump won a clear mandate to end the war in Ukraine. So what does Biden do in his final two months in office? Massively escalate it. Is his goal to hand Trump the worst situation possible?” Sacks wrote on X on Sunday.

Bradley Peniston contributed to this report from a military aircraft above the Banda Sea.