U.S. policy regarding Ukraine using Western arms for long-range strikes inside Russia remains unchanged, according to White House press briefings. However, pressure is mounting on the United States as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his support for greenlighting this strategy. Now, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also come out in favor of allowing Ukraine to use long-range European-made cruise missiles to strike targets deep within Russia, according to breaking news from The Wall Street Journal.
A decision to lift the ban on Kyiv using the Storm Shadow missile, which can hit targets 155 miles away, would be a major win for Ukraine, which has been urging Western countries for months to loosen restrictions on long-range weapons. British officials will ask the Biden administration to weigh in because some components of the missiles are made in the United States. However, White House Press Secretary John Kirby indicated that while it’s hard to take everything Putin says at face value, these latest threats and red lines are being taken “seriously.
Russian leadership has issued a follow-up statement to President Vladimir Putin’s Thursday brief video address warning that if the US and UK authorize Ukraine to pursue long-range strikes on Russian soil, then NATO and the Russian Federation will be in an official state of war. Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, informed the UN Security council that NATO countries would “start an open war” in allowing Western long-range missiles to target Russia.
The Kremlin’s position is that if Western missiles staring raining down on Russian soil, it will consider no distinction between Kiev forces and their NATO backers supplying the munitions. It won’t matter who is pulling the trigger. Moscow would become directly involved in military action against a nuclear power.
If Washington and London do actually pull the trigger on long-range strikes even after Putin’s new red line warning, there are a couple of hugely escalatory things Russia might do in response. Russia could begin directly taking out Ukrainian government buildings in the capital or declare a formal state of war along with full national mobilization and possibly declare war against NATO, which would likely be a point of no return.
