Summary
President Biden recently authorized Ukraine to use longer-range U.S. missiles to strike inside Russia, marking a small but overdue escalation in the conflict.
This decision aims to disrupt Russia’s military operations and bolster Ukraine’s position, especially with the potential Trump administration favoring pro-Russian policies.
Russia’s retaliatory missile strike on Ukraine, though deadly, represents more of the same tactics.
Analysts argue Biden’s earlier caution was excessive, and calling Russia’s nuclear bluffs is strategically necessary to counter further extortion.
Biden isn’t escalating the war, he is slow-walking the aid. Too much to die, too little to live, as the Ukrainians say. If you give Russia 9 months to pull critical assests out of range and only allow strikes deep into Russia after a whole nother nations enters the war on the side of Russia, you can’t frame that as escalatory, no matter how much Putin bitches and moans.
Hmmm. My idea of the process is a little different. Embedded CIA reports to the DOD on daily to and fro of the war. What the Ukrainians needed yesterday isn’t necessarily what they will need tomorrow. Wars evolve. The DOD takes this information and projects future needs leading to a budget recommendation to Congress. Congress creates a budget bill and passes it. Johnson sitting on that bill, BTW, put Ukraine behind the 8 ball. Biden uses that allocation to buy weapons per the DOD recommendations. Rules placed on weapons use, such as not using US missiles on Russian ground, are meant to stop escalation into NATO entering into the conflict. In fact when that rule ochanged there was an escalation, but not involving NATO, yet.
I think it’s pretty clearly the goal of NATO to keep Russia stuck in a prolonged war in Ukraine, which it’s been very successful so far.
I think they’ve given them far too little for that. Russians keep gaining territory which will eventually break the Ukrainian morale. If the line doesn’t move or moves back a bit that’s a whole other perspective.