EuropeAnalysis

Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian supply lines would likely expose Putin’s escalation bluff

Permission from US and Britain for Kyiv to hit targets deeper inside Russia expected to spark closer Moscow link with Iran and North Korea, not conflict with Nato

Russia's president Vladimir Putin: The Kremlin has warned the West of a potential Russia-Nato clash and even the possibility of nuclear war. Photograph: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/AFP via Getty Images
Daniel McLaughlin's picture
Daniel McLaughlin
Fri Sept 13 2024 - 18:08

For the 2½ years of Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukraine’s defensive efforts have been constrained by the so-called red lines of its western allies and of its enemy.

Ukraine hopes the US and Britain will erase another of these self-imposed limits after their leaders meet on Friday to discuss allowing its forces fire foreign-supplied arms at military targets deeper inside Russia – and in the process expose again what Kyiv and other critics of western caution dismiss as the Kremlin bluff of “escalation”.

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Throughout the full-scale war, western powers have repeatedly dismissed, then pondered, then debated, and finally granted Ukrainian requests for powerful weapons systems – from advanced tanks and missiles to US-made F16 fighter jets – though delivery remains slow and at a scale too small to turn the war in Kyiv’s favour.

As Ukraine endured each agonising wait under daily Russian bombardment and heavy pressure on the battlefield, the US and Germany, in particular, argued that giving Kyiv the weapons it needs would pose an unacceptable risk of escalation and of dragging the West into war with Russia.

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The Kremlin, meanwhile, has plastered the arena of its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine with red lines, warning the West that crossing any one of them would invite a potential Russia-Nato clash and even stoke the possibility of nuclear war.

Yet neither the delivery of F16s, Ukrainian strikes on Crimea and other occupied areas that the Kremlin claims as its own nor even the seizure of 1,000sq km of Russia’s Kursk region by Kyiv’s troops last month triggered the escalation that Moscow threatens and some western leaders claim to fear.

The Kremlin’s repeat of such rhetoric now “is likely intended to influence the ongoing western policy debates about Ukraine’s ability to strike military targets in Russia with western-provided precision weapons”, said the Institute for the Study of War.

“Delays in western policy decisions in support of Ukraine’s defence have resulted in critical delays of military assistance to Ukraine, forcing Ukrainian counteroffensives to culminate and allowing Russia to seize the theatre-wide initiative.”

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In any case, as with each previous western delivery of advanced weapons, permission to hit targets deeper inside Russia would not be a game-changer for Ukraine: Moscow’s advantage in ammunition and personnel remains vast, and it has had ample time to move warplanes, key command posts and large arms stores beyond the range of the US, British and French missiles in Kyiv’s arsenal.

Permission would allow Ukraine to increase pressure on Russian supply lines, however, and any Kremlin response would probably take the form of deeper co-operation with allies Iran and North Korea in missile and possibly nuclear technology, rather than any direct military clash with Nato states.