By ROBBIE GRAMER and ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL
11/19/2024
POLITICO
Ukraine’s strongest backers in Washington have a message for President JOE BIDEN: It’s still not enough.
After news broke that the Biden administration greenlit Ukraine’s ability to use U.S. long-range weapons inside Russia, many pro-Ukraine U.S. lawmakers reacted with exasperated messages that boiled down to “too little, too late” and “okay, so what’s next?”
These reactions have come from conservative Republicans and both centrist and progressive Democrats — reflecting a rare point of political unity in Congress on Ukraine on the cusp of DONALD TRUMP taking office.
“I think this is something President Biden should have done a little bit earlier,” said Sen. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, a progressive Democrat from Maryland. “This announcement still doesn’t go far enough,” said Rep. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D-Mass.), a centrist and heavy-hitter on national security issues. And on the right, outgoing Senate Majority Leader MITCH McCONNELL on Tuesday slammed the Biden administration for only approving how Ukraine could use ATACMS in Russian territory after “months of dithering.” Other GOP lawmakers such as Sen. ROGER WICKER (R-Miss.) and Rep. MIKE TURNER (R-Ohio) have voiced similar frustrations.
These sentiments also underscore a tone of desperation as Ukraine’s battlefield positions look grimmer by the day. Russia, now with the help of North Korean soldiers, is slowly chipping away at Ukraine’s frontlines as Ukraine faces manpower shortages. Then there’s the fact that Trump is entering office in two months and his approach to Ukraine, outside of vague declarations he can broker an immediate peace deal, is still largely up in the air.
So what’s next? Kyiv’s allies hope that Biden will grant more leeway on how Ukrainian forces can use ATACMS. Already, some of these lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to lift all restrictions on how Ukraine could use long-range U.S. weapons in Russian territory.
Auchincloss, for example, wants the administration to approve of Ukraine using U.S. weapons to strike at key Russian oil refineries near Moscow in a bid to kneecap one of the Kremlin’s most important sources of revenue for its war machine. What is “more meaningful than battlefield tactical successes, is disabling your enemy’s means of production and distribution,” Auchincloss said. “They are within range for oil refineries around Moscow that account for a third to 40 percent of its refined petroleum.”
Ukraine’s allies in Washington also hope a potential U.S. decision can push fellow NATO allies France and Britain to lift their own restrictions on how Ukraine uses their long-range weapons systems in Russia.
But unlike past iterations of this now very repetitive debate on what the U.S. sends to Ukraine and when — from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to sending U.S. battle tanks or F-16 fighter jets — ATACMS may be the last major offensive weapons system left that the U.S. has to take off its shelf and hand to Ukraine.
In short, the United States may have hit a ceiling on what types of systems it can send Ukraine — though not the quantity of aid it’s giving. The Biden administration is working to shovel the last of around $6 billion in remaining allocated aid to Ukraine by the time Trump takes office.
With help from Nahal Toosi and Daniel Lippman