Ukraine has promised Washington it will not use advanced rocket systems supplied by the US to hit targets inside Russian territory, as Moscow warned that the move risked a “third country” being drawn into the war.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Wednesday that after Joe Biden’s agreement to provide Ukraine with multiple-launch rocket systems, Ukraine had “given us assurances that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory”.
The US plans to supply the M142 high mobility artillery rocket system (Himars) equipped with munitions with a range of about 50 miles, but not the more advanced rockets that can fly 185 miles. Himars is light, highly mobile and can be quickly reloaded by its crew.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Saudi Arabia, said the supply of the rocket launchers to Ukraine raised the risk of a “third country” being dragged into the conflict.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said such supplies would not encourage Ukraine’s leadership to resume stalled peace talks. “We believe that the United States is purposefully and diligently adding fuel to the fire,” he said. “In order to trust [someone], you need to have experience with situations when such promises were kept. Regretfully, there is no such experience whatsoever.”
Shortly after the US decision was announced, the Russian defence ministry said Russia’s nuclear forces were holding drills in Ivanovo province, north-east of Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.
The expectation is that Ukraine could use the rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where they could intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk.
With Ukraine facing reverses in the battle for Donbas, Kyiv has been pushing hard for allies in Europe and the US to supply long-range artillery systems in attempt to redress the balance for its outgunned and outnumbered forces in a war that has increasingly become dominated by intense artillery duels.
Each launcher can carry six GPS-guided rockets, which can be reloaded in about a minute, and the system is considered more advanced than other rocket systems that Ukrainian forces currently use.
Jonathan Finer, the White House deputy national security adviser, said Washington believed the system would meet Kyiv’s needs. “This is a defensive conflict that the Ukrainians are waging. Russian forces are on their territory,” Finer said in an interview with CNN.
He said there were significant targets that Ukrainians could not reach with the weapons they had, and the rocket system would make a big difference in the conflict in the south-eastern part of the country, where Russian forces are currently focused.
However, there was some scepticism among defence analysts over how significant an impact the delivery of Himars might have on the battlefield in the immediate future, pointing to questions over Ukraine’s ability to effectively deploy it.
Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote on Twitter: “We have an incomplete picture of the current combat status of the Ukrainian armed forces. I would be cautious when attempting to assess how quickly Ukraine would be able to integrate new platforms/weapons systems to increase combat effectiveness in a larger-scale counteroffensive.
“Combined arms manoeuvre is a complex undertaking. What you don’t want is rushing undertrained brigades into combat. Knowing how to rudimentarily use and do simple repairs on a weapon system is merely the first step and does not indicate how effective units will be in actual combat.”
While the weapons will close some of the gap, allowing Ukraine to hit further behind Russian lines in Ukraine – in particular allowing it to target command centres – other experts point out that using Himars effectively will rely heavily on the quality of Ukrainian battlefield intelligence.
The promise of Himars represents the 11th US assistance package for Ukraine approved so far and will be the first to tap into the $40bn in security and economic assistance package recently passed by Congress.
The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so their supply would involve taking weapons from US inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two.
Philip Breedlove, a retired US Air Force general who was Nato’s top commander from 2013 to 2016, said Ukraine needed multiple-launch rocket systems.
“These are very important capabilities that we have not gotten them yet. And they not only need them, but they have been very vociferous in explaining they want them,” he said. “We need to get serious about supplying this army so that it can do what the world is asking it to do: fight a world superpower alone on the battlefield.”
Agencies contributed to this article
