The administration of US President Joe Biden is currently still reluctant to provide Ukraine with ATACMS long-range tactical missile systems, which it has been asking for for months.
This is reported by CNN with reference to its own sources.
ATACMS has a range of up to 300 kilometers. The Biden administration still believes that providing these systems could be escalating because they could be used to target Russia itself. Currently, the maximum range of weapons that the USA provides to Ukraine is about 80 kilometers.
""Itʼs our assessment that they donʼt currently require ATACMS to service targets that are directly relevant to the current fight," Deputy Defense Secretary Colin Kahl told reporters in late August. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also hinted that the US position on this matter has not changed — the Ukrainians are achieving their goals domestically thanks to HIMARS.
Some US military officials have also acknowledged that systems currently considered too escalatory, such as F-16s, could eventually be provided to Ukraine. But these sources warned that such a decision is likely to be made in the distant future and is not related to Ukraineʼs recent successes in the Kharkiv region and the south.
Ukraineʼs Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told The Wall Street Journal in July that his country needed ATACMS because Russia has longer-range multiple-launch rocket systems, and Ukraine has "passed the test" with the successful use of HIMARS, which has a range of more than 60 km.
- On September 12, it became known that Ukraine sent the USA a request with a list of the necessary weapons to continue a successful counteroffensive in 2023. The list of needs for offensive operations includes 29 types of weapons systems and ammunition. These include ATACMS, tanks, drones, artillery systems, more Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and two thousand missiles for HIMARS.