What are the American-made weapons that could change everything in the Russia - Ukraine war?
Washington has provided over $8bn in military aid since the invasion but still has concerns over providing systems with the range to hit Russian soil.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent trip to Iran – his first foreign engagement since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February – has deepened concern in Washington that the two anti-Western nations are working on a military deal for the provision of several hundred unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to be deployed on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Russian leader held talks in Tehran with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi, in a meeting also attended by Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO-member state Turkey. Russia’s desire to lay its hands on such technology comes in response to Ukraine’s successful use of Turkey-supplied Bayraktar drones to target Russian munitions dumps, supply lines and armour well behind the front lines.
Should Russia cement a deal for advanced UAVs, Ukraine will require counter-technology to knock them out of the sky. Some of the drones expected to soon be in the hands of the invaders have the ability to fire missiles in-flight and military experts have suggested some could even be deployed as “suicide drones” to hit specific targets deep in unoccupied Ukraine.
US fears provoking Russian regional escalation
The issue of the pending escalation of the drone war is a continuance of Western reluctance to provide Ukraine with systems that could potentially turn the tide against Russia – reluctance that stems from repeated warning from the Kremlin that ramping up Ukraine’s ability to push Russian forces back will result in a widening of the war in Ukraine and possibly beyond. Putin issued a warning in June that if the US supplied longer-range missile systems to Ukraine, “we will draw the appropriate conclusions and use our own arms, which we do not lack. We will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting.”
To date, the US has supplied Ukraine with 16 high-mobility artillery rocket systems, concretely the M142 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), which is capable of hitting targets at a range of 85 kilometers (53 miles) with greater precision than previous systems provided. Russia has now made it the priority of its own artillery to knock out these systems, with the Kremlin’s military brass claiming earlier this week that it had destroyed four.
Russia promises response to US HIMARS
Russia’s military “tasks” in Ukraine now go beyond the eastern Donbas region, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on 20 July, telling state news agency RIA Novosti that Moscow’s objectives will expand still further if the West keeps supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons such as the HIMARS. However, Ukraine is asking for more hardware to take on the Russian invaders. Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska made an impassioned plea in the US Congress on the same day as Lavrov’s assertion, asking for more US support in the form of advanced weapons.
“I’m asking for weapons, weapons that could not be used to wage a war on somebody else’s land, but to protect one’s home and the right to live a life in them. I’ve asked for air defense systems in order for rockets … not to kill children in their strollers, in order for rockets not to destroy children’s homes and kill entire families,” Zelenska told a sympathetic audience. The Biden administration has poured over $8 billion into Ukraine aid since the beginning of the invasion but remains reluctant to ship longer-range systems that would further provoke the Kremlin: HIMARS systems, for example, have a maximum range of 300km (185 miles): that would bring Russian soil into target range for the defenders.
Ukraine is seeking access to these systems, known as the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), but Washington is understandably concerned by the range of such weapons. However, the White House has been more willing to provide defensive hardware, authorizing the transfer of two Norwegian-US ASAMS advanced anti-missile systems – which are deployed to protect Washington, DC, itself – to Ukraine to counter Russian cruise missile attacks.
US to oppose any Russian attempt to annex Donbas
The Kremlin launched what it still terms a “special military operation” against its neighbouring country in response to the eastern expansion of the NATO military alliance and to carry out what Vladimir Putin described as an attempt to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.”
Putin’s aim is now to seize control of the Donbas region and other swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine, including all of Ukraine’s Black Sea access points, and link these with Crimea, which was illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. The US said earlier this week that it saw signs Russia was preparing to formally annex territory it has seized in Ukraine and promised that it would oppose any such move.