The United States has agreed to give Kiev missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers, further escalating the Ukraine war.
The US media reported on Saturday that US President Joe Biden plans to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to fight the Russians.
Sources familiar with the matter said Biden plans to send Kiev ATACMS missiles with a range of up to 300km that could hit Russian targets way behind the frontline between the two warring neighbors.
According to NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed US officials, Biden, who declared on Thursday that his administration would continue to support the war against Russia, promised the visiting Ukrainian president that Kiev would be given “a small number” of the ATACMS.
The Washington Post cited several people familiar with the matter as saying that the ATACMS allocated for Kiev will be armed with banned cluster bomblets rather than the regular single warhead.
On Thursday, Biden also announced that the first US Abrams tanks allocated for Ukraine will arrive there next week.
Media reported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has for months been pushing for tanks, missiles and aircraft to strengthen Kiev’s forces against the better-endowed Russians.
The US has already supplied Kiev with more than $100bn worth of weapons and munitions.
Biden insists that Russia’s military campaign in Donbas — aimed to defend the pro-Moscow Russian-speaking people in the region — is a threat to world democracy, and Russian President Vladimir Putin would look to invade another country to stop NATO’s encroachment if it successfully takes Ukraine.
However, US politicians from the opposing GOP Party have rejected the Democratic president’s argument.
Republicans maintain that the West’s ongoing proxy war against Russia — spearheaded by Zelensky, a comedian-turned-politician, who lacks any real military and diplomatic experience other than that he obtained on screen — is in vain, and Ukraine’s president will never ever bring victory for the senile Biden.
In this regard, Republican lawmakers, as well as some leading presidential candidates, including former President Donald Trump, have pushed for stopping the supply of weapons and munitions for Kiev.
The skeptics say Zelensky’s chances of defeating Russian troops are next to nil, insisting that it is not in the interest of the US nation for American tax payer money to be sent to Ukraine in the form of financial aid, weapons and munitions to be burned in the frontline or deep behind by Kiev’s forces in their futile fight against the stronger Russian troops.
Ahead of Zelensky’s US visit, Republican lawmakers wrote to Biden declaring their opposition to continued spending on Kiev.
