Permission to win: Ukraine needs Biden more than weapons to defeat Russia, experts say

Shortly after President Joe Biden announced a new $225 million arms and ammunition package for Ukraine, during an in-person meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Friday, he told Biden that to thwart the Russian invasion, Ukraine must be allowed to use weapons to strike at its source: inside Russia itself.

Last week, Biden gave limited authorization for Ukrainian forces to retaliate against Russians attacking Kharkiv just across the border with U.S. weapons, but the administration stressed that it still opposed strikes on key military targets elsewhere on Russian territory.

“This should not be construed as an abandonment of our broader policy that we neither encourage nor permit the use of U.S. weapons against targets in Russia,” a U.S. official said.

Zelensky stressed the importance of using long-range Western weapons, such as the US Army's Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), against military targets in Russia.

“There is no moral, legal or military reason to stop them from using ATACMS or any other weapon we give them across the border,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who led all U.S. Army forces in Europe.

Unlike ethics, law or sound military strategy, America's restrictive policy toward Ukraine is based on fear, according to Hodges and other experts on the region.

“I think it's really just the fear of escalation,” George Barros, head of the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War, told ABC News on Friday.

Since launching his invasion in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has deliberately cultivated this fear within the United States and NATO. Putin recently brandished the saber on Friday while speaking at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, where he threatened to start arming the West's enemies with precision weapons.

“If they supply these weapons to the combat zone and call for their use on our territory, why then do we not have the right to do the same, to react in a mirror manner?” Putin said.

Biden and his cabinet members at the Pentagon and State Department have repeatedly pledged to help Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” However, Hodges and Barros believe the administration was unduly intimidated by the Kremlin into not doing “the right thing.”

Hodges considers the Biden administration's hesitant and incremental approach to supporting Ukraine – as evidenced by the refusal to send advanced equipment such as Patriot air defense systems, Bradley tanks and fighters F-16 before finally giving in – as a symptom of its failure to conceive and express a clear strategic vision for its support of Ukraine.

“It’s a bit crazy, it leaves all kinds of reservations,” he said. “It’s very difficult to develop a good strategy and a good policy if you don’t have a clearly defined end state.”

Without a clearly defined goal, “you end up with bad policy, just like we did for 20 years in Afghanistan,” he said.

With its current restrictions, the United States is “giving Russia a sanctuary from which to murder innocent Ukrainians,” Hodges said.

Changing this policy to help deny Russian forces sanctuary on their own territory could have a major impact on the course of the war, according to Barros.

“One of the most decisive things the administration can do, but hasn't really done, is to unambiguously eliminate all sanctuary space and allow the Ukrainians to conduct deep strikes and operational with all the means provided by the United States,” Barros said. “It's extremely important, because I actually think we're on the cusp of what could be a game-changer for the Ukrainians and what they could do on the battlefield.”

Russia's reliance on centralized leadership orchestrating masses of poorly trained troops could make it particularly vulnerable to long-range strikes against command centers and other targets behind the front lines.

“The way to overcome their only advantage, which is mass, is to be precise,” Hodges said. “Accuracy up to 300 kilometers allows you to destroy headquarters, logistics, artillery and long-range fire. If you can destroy them, then you completely emasculate the Russian army.”

A Biden policy shift could disrupt Putin's war machine even before Ukraine launches its first U.S. missile deep into Russia, according to Barros. If Russian commanders anticipated the new threat, they would have to make difficult decisions about whether to move one of its limited missiles. air defense systems move away from the front to cover its rear areas, leaving one or both at least partially exposed.

These rear areas are “currently configured to maximize economic efficiency,” Barros said. But a new credible threat of attack could immediately deprive Russia of this luxury.

Once the restrictions are removed, Ukraine could also use U.S.-supplied precision weapons to potentially destroy Russia's air defenses, making it more likely that Ukraine could break the current air defense impasse. of air superiority and use its next F-16s wisely.

Despite the limits imposed, the military aid approved by the Biden administration has been significant, and it is unlikely that Ukraine would have retained so much of its territory without it.

With the aid package announced Friday, which included more artillery and ammunition, as well as rockets for its High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), the United States has now committed more than 51 billion dollars in Ukraine since Russia started the war.

“It's better than not having it, of course,” Hodges told ABC News, “But none of that is deal-breaker.”

Helping Ukraine and helping it achieve victory are not the same thing.

“We haven’t even tried to help Ukraine win yet,” Hodges said.

Although the outcome will undoubtedly have consequences for the Ukrainians, helping them achieve victory is not a matter of altruism for the Americans, according to Hodges and Barros.

“If you want to keep NATO out of a fight with Russia, then we have to help Ukraine defeat Russia,” Hodges said.

Barros echoed the sentiment, adding that he thought Putin would like to be seen as the man who proved NATO was a paper tiger in a future attack on Europe.

“There is a real opportunity here for the Russians to achieve this in the future in a small-scale conventional war, if we are not careful,” he said.

But how the United States handles the current conflagration in Europe could also have implications for a potentially higher-stakes war looming in the Pacific, Hodges argued.

“I think the Chinese are watching closely to see if we have the political will, the industrial capacity and the military capacity to help Ukraine defeat Russia, where the problem is much simpler than in the Indo-Pacific region.” Hodges said. “So it’s also about deterring China.”

Barros said that if the United States undermined its stated principle of support for Ukraine because of Russia's nuclear threats, it would give the “greenest possible green light” to any other malicious nation seeking to exert influence over America.

“All you have to do is get nuclear weapons, and you will have a veto over our decisions,” he said.

He added: “If we are not prepared to take this risk with Russia, why would it be any different with China? »

And that risk is low, according to Barros and Hodges.

“Putin, he's bad, but he's not crazy,” said Hodges, who argued that Russia has more to gain by threatening to use nuclear weapons than by detonating them, which would likely result in a rapid and destructive response.

Barros pointed out that the United States had already ignored several warnings from the Kremlin which proved ineffective.

“Even though we can't eliminate the risk 100%, I think we can be intellectually firm on this and say that the risk is extremely low, that we can effectively repel the Russians, which we have done over the past few years “We've collected enough evidence over two years, and we know enough about Putin's reaction to our efforts to push him back, that we can actually do this,” he said. .