The USA has not changed its opinion on the transfer of long-range ATACMS missiles for the HIMARS and M270 systems to Ukraine.
Citing four sources, Politico writes that if earlier the main argument of the opponents of the transfer was the fear of an aggressive step against Russia by the USA, now the Americans are worried that they themselves will not have enough ATACMS. This is what the sources explained the "interim" decision of the USA to transfer to the Ukrainian Armed Forces GLSDB high-precision rocket bombs with a range of up to 150 kilometers.
Over the past 20 years, Lockheed Martin has produced approximately 4 000 ATACMS missiles of various configurations. Some of them were sold to allied countries. Nearly 600 were used by the U.S. military during the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars.
According to Politicoʼs sources, one of the workarounds Kyiv is considering is to seek Washingtonʼs approval to purchase ATACMS from an ally. Such missiles are in South Korea, Poland, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain.
On February 14, Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov met with his American colleague Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the meeting of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine.
A person close to the Ukrainian government told Politico that Kyiv does not expect new weapons in the aid package that the U.S. will announce this week. That is, it probably wonʼt contain ATACMS or F-16s, but it will have munitions, air defense and spare parts.
- The previous meeting in the Rammstein format took place on January 20. According to its results, 12 countries agreed to transfer Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Among these countries are Poland and Finland, which publicly spoke about it, as well as Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark.