Rescuers search for victims in an apartment building destroyed by Russian missile attack in centre Lviv, Western Ukraine, on Sept. 4.Mykola Tys/The Associated Press
Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Last Saturday, just as a friend and I were tucking into dinner at a popular Odesa eatery, the air raid sirens went off. Within less than a minute, two explosions rang out in the skies above. Ukraine’s air defences had kicked in to intercept two Russian ballistic missiles, sparing this historic port city from another devastating blow.
Less than two weeks earlier, residents of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv – the region from where many Ukrainian Canadians trace their roots – weren’t so lucky: precision strikes of Russian ballistic missiles and drones killed seven, injured more than 50 and caused massive damage to residential areas.
These all-too-common incidents clearly demonstrate the threat of Russian missiles and drones, and show why Ukraine needs long-range missiles to supplement the patchy protection offered by air defence systems and break the pattern of Russia’s attacks.
Ukraine is a massive territory – larger even than France – and protecting every square inch with air defence systems is impossible. That is why the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressuring Western allies for months for the green light to strike deeper inside Russia, at the very launchpads from where incoming missiles originate.
At the moment, the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles (which have a maximum range of 250 kilometres) already in Ukrainian hands are limited to targets situated on Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine, or in Russian regions closest to Kharkiv. The fear in Washington and some European capitals is that, by easing restrictions on how Ukraine can use missiles supplied by the West, it would provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the excuse to reach for the unthinkable: tactical nuclear weapons. The Kremlin dictator has threatened to use them in the past but hasn’t done so, knowing that it would invite a massive retaliation – and anger his closest superpower ally, China.
But the lame-duck administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is succumbing to Mr. Putin’s bluffing and delaying permission for Ukraine to use the greater range. Even the persuasive arguments of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who last week visited the White House, has failed to change American policy. Neither did credible reports that Iran was shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against targets in Ukraine.
It is high time Western allies abandon the drip-drip approach of aiding Ukraine. Had they grown the backbone sooner to provide Ukraine with everything it needs, the course of the war would have changed long ago in Kyiv’s favour. Instead, Russian troops are now trying to take all of the remaining Donetsk region. Every delay is a gift to Mr. Putin.
The time lag has allowed Russian military leaders to further fortify bunkers and move potential targets further away from Ukraine. It has also given Russia more time to pummel Ukrainian critical infrastructure, such as power generation facilities and sub-stations, to the point that massive outages are now forecast for the upcoming winter. One senior energy insider in Kyiv told me that the damage has been so extensive that Ukrainians need to brace themselves for a worst-case scenario this winter, including evacuating to neighbouring countries.
With the clock ticking down to the U.S. presidential elections in November, which could result in a second Donald Trump presidency, there’s no time for dilly-dallying on whether Kyiv needs better missile-strike capability. It now looks like a final decision won’t be made until the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the month.
Hopefully by then, decision-makers will arrive in New York convinced that future-proofing Ukraine’s muscle power is the best way to prevent Mr. Trump from handing Mr. Putin a victory via a one-sided peace plan that calls for the Kremlin hanging onto all the territories it has seized from Ukraine.
Of course, giving Ukraine longer-range strike capability could prolong the war and even provoke Mr. Putin to use alternative sinister means to harm Ukraine, such as triggering an accidental explosion at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s largest and sits on land occupied now by Russia.
But is the alternative outcome better: more civilian Ukrainian deaths and damage to critical infrastructure that could trigger another massive flow of asylum-seekers toward Europe – and further irreversible damage to the NATO alliance’s credibility?