294 - Taking the War to Moscow: Washington Needs to Stop Micromanaging

            The Ukrainians are wisely attempting to make the continuing invasion of their country by Russians much more costly for Putin and his co-conspirators than ever before.  But to do so in any meaningful and lasting manner, President Biden must unleash the guns of September and October. Let us no longer restrain Ukraine.

            The calculus is clear. Putin over time has access to more fighters (prisoners, conscripts, and existing recruits) than President Volodymyr Zelensky.  He has managed to procure an almost unending array of big artillery shells and missiles from North Korea's stockpiles. Iran is supplying thousands of drones and potent 175-mile range missiles. (Ships full of drones and missiles slip through the Straits of Bosphorus and into and through the Black Sea.) China, protesting innocence, is helping Russia with spare parts, microchips, and the innards of offensive weapons. Turkey, a two-timing member of NATO, is letting electronic items, microchips, and other banned and sanctioned materials slip through Ankara and Istanbul en route to Moscow via Astana, Baku, Dushanbe, Samarkand, Tbilisi, and Yerevan.

            Zelensky and his brave compatriots are fighting for their lives, for their territory (20 percent of which has been stolen since 2014 and the 2022 invasions), and for their own enduring freedom and for the lasting freedom of Europe and what we call the free world. They have fewer men than Russia at their disposal, less ammunition, fewer aircraft, and more limited numbers of drones (many of which are homemade). But they do have much better morale than the Russians, and have repeatedly demonstrated a spirited willingness to deploy unconventional tactics to advantage. The invasion of the Kursk province inside Russia is an example. So have been their drone attacks on distant Moscow (712 miles from Kyiv) and their sometimes successful drone and missile attacks on fuel and ammunition depots in Rostov and Black Sea naval ports.

            To sustain these thrusts against Putin's armed forces and to make them a more decisive variable in the war, however, Zelensky and his generals urgently need a thoroughgoing approval by Biden and America's NATO allies to employ existing long-range missile and artillery weapons fully against Russia. Thus far, Washington has only belatedly and inch by inch permitted Ukraine to take the war into Russia. Micromanaging, we have for far too long begrudged the employment of precisely those kinetic instruments that might just conceivably compel Putin and his generals to pay attention and the long-silenced Russian public to take notice.

            Ukraine has been fighting with not one but both hands tied by Washington behind its back.  It is long past time for those shackles to be removed.

            Biden has not wanted to provoke Putin unduly. Putin's vast warehouses stuffed with tactical nuclear weapons and his silos readied with long-range nuclear-tipped missiles have held Washington back, especially during the run up to a globe-shattering election. In a very telling sense, Putin's blackmail has worked to handicap Ukraine and to limit the extent to which publicly or even covertly the U. S. and its allies could and can unleash the full power of its materiel help for Ukraine.

            We still rightly hesitate to make countering Putin and defending freedom our task and our war.  Biden is determined, and must be through November, to commit no American personnel to the battles for and around Ukraine.  The Pentagon worried at first about what Putin would do. But as his forces were forced to retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv, lost territory near Kharkiv, suffered naval setbacks along the Black Sea, and were forced into an intractable stalemate in the Donbas (whatever now happens to Pokrovsk), it has become evident that Putin is prepared to keep slogging rather than to employ nuclear materials that would risk invoking a major Western response.  His bluff has been called often.

            As a Helsinki-based commentator and former NATO official wrote presciently: "Crucially, if deep strikes into Russia were a trigger for escalation, the world would know by now... Ukraine’s successful invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, the first occupation of Russia by a foreign force since World War II, also went unanswered beyond rhetoric."  Furthermore, "Allowing Ukraine to conduct deep strikes into Russia using all means at its disposal, including by entering Russian airspace to fire air-launched missiles, is essential for both the land war and air war. "

            Even Ukraine's bold advance into Kursk and its occupation of 500 square miles of Russian land has occasioned little effective response (until yesterday).  Washington needs at least to enable the Kursk initiative to grow by letting Ukraine employ its existing howitzers and missile launchers -- American  Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS  and British Storm Shadows and French SCALPS, with  190 or 155 mile ranges -- to the full. The dispatch by the Pentagon of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles  (JASSMs) -- air launched cruise missiles with a 230-mile range -- would also prove helpful.  The JASSMs carry 1000-pound warheads that could be propelled from a F-16 (a few are slowly arriving) in Ukrainian air space toward airfields and depots well inside of Russia.

            Rural and urban Russians could then feel the risk and danger of war as Ukrainians have long known it. Moreover, if the Ukrainian armed forces are at last unleashed they might be able to assault the airfields and launching pads from which Russia has over the past year or so unleashed devastating attacks on Ukraine's entire electricity generating infrastructure, on its grain exporting ports, on cadet academies, and on apartment dwellings in cities as far from Moscow as Lviv. It could stop Russia's attacks on Ukraine with glide bombs, missiles, drones, and more.

            It is well past time to take the war into Russia to alarm the long spared Russian public, to make citizens and generals question whether the invasion of Ukraine still has any purpose other than Putin's vanity, and to give Ukraine as much leverage as possible in the war ending events or negotiations that must sooner rather than later bring such wasteful destruction and carnage to a conclusion.

            The key element is freeing up Ukraine from foreign constraints so that it can bring the war more fully to Russia.  Even in an election year, that is the very least Washington should be doing. It should also find a way to intercept the ships carrying Iranian materiel to Moscow and to curtail shipments by train from Pyongyang to Moscow.  Then there is the serious pressure that should be put on Ankara and other countries to halt clandestine goods going north toward war. There is no time to lose. Taking the War to Moscow: Washington Can Stop Micromanaging

            The Ukrainians are wisely attempting to make the continuing invasion of their country by Russians much more costly for Putin and his co-conspirators than ever before.  But to do so in any meaningful and lasting manner, President Biden must unleash the guns of September and October. Let us no longer restrain Ukraine.

            The calculus is clear. Putin over time has access to more fighters (prisoners, conscripts, and existing recruits) than President Volodymyr Zelensky.  He has managed to procure an almost unending array of big artillery shells and missiles from North Korea's stockpiles. Iran is supplying thousands of drones and potent 175-mile range missiles. (Ships full of drones and missiles slip through the Straits of Bosphorus and into and through the Black Sea.) China, protesting innocence, is helping Russia with spare parts, microchips, and the innards of offensive weapons. Turkey, a two-timing member of NATO, is letting electronic items, microchips, and other banned and sanctioned materials slip through Ankara and Istanbul en route to Moscow via Astana, Baku, Dushanbe, Samarkand, Tbilisi, and Yerevan.

            Zelensky and his brave compatriots are fighting for their lives, for their territory (20 percent of which has been stolen since 2014 and the 2022 invasions), and for their own enduring freedom and for the lasting freedom of Europe and what we call the free world. They have fewer men than Russia at their disposal, less ammunition, fewer aircraft, and more limited numbers of drones (many of which are homemade). But they do have much better morale than the Russians, and have repeatedly demonstrated a spirited willingness to deploy unconventional tactics to advantage. The invasion of the Kursk province inside Russia is an example. So have been their drone attacks on distant Moscow (712 miles from Kyiv) and their sometimes successful drone and missile attacks on fuel and ammunition depots in Rostov and Black Sea naval ports.

            To sustain these thrusts against Putin's armed forces and to make them a more decisive variable in the war, however, Zelensky and his generals urgently need a thoroughgoing approval by Biden and America's NATO allies to employ existing long-range missile and artillery weapons fully against Russia. Thus far, Washington has only belatedly and inch by inch permitted Ukraine to take the war into Russia. Micromanaging, we have for far too long begrudged the employment of precisely those kinetic instruments that might just conceivably compel Putin and his generals to pay attention and the long-silenced Russian public to take notice.

            Ukraine has been fighting with not one but both hands tied by Washington behind its back.  It is long past time for those shackles to be removed.

            Biden has not wanted to provoke Putin unduly. Putin's vast warehouses stuffed with tactical nuclear weapons and his silos readied with long-range nuclear-tipped missiles have held Washington back, especially during the run up to a globe-shattering election. In a very telling sense, Putin's blackmail has worked to handicap Ukraine and to limit the extent to which publicly or even covertly the U. S. and its allies could and can unleash the full power of its materiel help for Ukraine.

            We still rightly hesitate to make countering Putin and defending freedom our task and our war.  Biden is determined, and must be through November, to commit no American personnel to the battles for and around Ukraine.  The Pentagon worried at first about what Putin would do. But as his forces were forced to retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv, lost territory near Kharkiv, suffered naval setbacks along the Black Sea, and were forced into an intractable stalemate in the Donbas (whatever now happens to Pokrovsk), it has become evident that Putin is prepared to keep slogging rather than to employ nuclear materials that would risk invoking a major Western response.  His bluff has been called often.

            As a Helsinki-based commentator said presciently: "Crucially, if deep strikes into Russia were a trigger for escalation, the world would know by now... Ukraine’s successful invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, the first occupation of Russia by a foreign force since World War II, also went unanswered beyond rhetoric."  Furthermore, "Allowing Ukraine to conduct deep strikes into Russia using all means at its disposal, including by entering Russian airspace to fire air-launched missiles, is essential for both the land war and air war. "

            Even Ukraine's bold advance into Kursk and its occupation of 500 square miles of Russian land has occasioned little effective response (until yesterday).  Washington needs at least to enable the Kursk initiative to grow by letting Ukraine employ its existing howitzers and missile launchers -- American  Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS  and British Storm Shadows and French SCALPS, with  190 or 155 mile ranges -- to the full. The dispatch by the Pentagon of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles  (JASSMs) -- air launched cruise missiles with a 230-mile range -- would also prove helpful.  The JASSMs carry 1000-pound warheads that could be propelled from a F-16 (a few are slowly arriving) in Ukrainian air space toward airfields and depots well inside of Russia.

            Rural and urban Russians could then feel the risk and danger of war as Ukrainians have long known it. Moreover, if the Ukrainian armed forces are at last unleashed they might be able to assault the airfields and launching pads from which Russia has over the past year or so unleashed devastating attacks on Ukraine's entire electricity generating infrastructure, on its grain exporting ports, on cadet academies, and on apartment dwellings in cities as far from Moscow as Lviv. It could stop Russia's attacks on Ukraine with glide bombs, missiles, drones, and more.

            It is well past time to take the war into Russia to alarm the long spared Russian public, to make citizens and generals question whether the invasion of Ukraine still has any purpose other than Putin's vanity, and to give Ukraine as much leverage as possible in the war ending events or negotiations that must sooner rather than later bring such wasteful destruction and carnage to a conclusion.

            The key element is freeing up Ukraine from foreign constraints so that it can bring the war more fully to Russia.  Even in an election year, that is the very least Washington should be doing. It should also find a way to intercept the ships carrying Iranian materiel to Moscow and to curtail shipments by train from Pyongyang to Moscow.  Then there is the serious pressure that should be put on Ankara and other countries to halt clandestine goods going north toward war. There is no time to lose.