US officials are asking the war-torn nation to clearly outline its combat objectives for requesting expanded use of US-supplied long-range missiles.

Ukraine has stated that it plans to use the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a range of 300 kilometers (186 miles), to strike Russian airfields, command centers, and weapons depots deep in enemy territory.

President Joe Biden’s administration currently allows Kyiv to use the weapon only for strikes within Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.

US officials remain skeptical that lifting the restrictions would have a significant impact on the war, noting that it may also come with greater risks.

Growing Pressure

The US has been facing increasing pressure from NATO allies to allow Kyiv greater freedom to hit targets inside Russia to level the battlefield.

Moscow’s forces have been using long-range aircraft, missiles, and drones to attack Ukraine, quickly gaining the upper hand in the ongoing war.

Washington has expressed concerns that doing so would further escalate the war and allow Russia to reverse-engineer some of America’s most sophisticated weapons.

It has also argued that the Ukrainian military is already using long-range drones to strike deep into Russia, which is a cheaper and more strategic method than firing costly missiles.

Additionally, the White House downplayed the capabilities of its ATACMS, stating they would be ineffective now because Moscow has likely moved its most immediate threats to facilities beyond the missile’s range.

“I don’t believe one capability is going to be decisive, and I stand by that comment,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin affirmed.

Russian Warning

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any strikes using Western weapons deep inside its territory will lead to a significant change in the nature of the conflict.

He said such a move would be viewed as an escalation of the war, making the US and its NATO allies directly involved.

“And if this is so, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us,” Putin told reporters.

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The Russian diplomat described as “goading” the continuing refusal of the US to permit Kyiv the use of American-made weapons for strikes deep into enemy territory.

He claimed that the US government is laying the ground for a decision to simply remove all the existing restrictions without much thought.

“The current administration behaves like a person who extends one hand and holds a dagger behind their back with another one,” Antonov said, referring to the government of President Joe Biden.

He also said a serious dialogue between the two military superpowers will only happen if Washington ends its “hostile policy” towards Russia, including its support for Ukraine and the sanctions it imposed against Moscow.

‘Critical for Ukraine’

Ukraine has long been calling on its allies to give carte blanche on the use of their donated weapons inside Russia.

Though most have heeded the plea, Washington remains reluctant to allow greater use of the weapons it supplied due to concerns that doing so would only escalate the conflict.

The US temporarily eased restrictions in May, but only to defend the under-fire Kharkiv region.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said it is critical for Kyiv to be given greater freedom in the use of Western weapons to destroy military targets deeper inside Russia.

“It is equally important to be able to destroy military targets in Russia’s rear with Western long-range weapons. This is perhaps the only way to protect our people from glide bombs and other destructive airstrikes,” he explained.

Ukraine’s forces are now in the third week of their surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region.

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But despite appearances, this development is not progress: it augurs more sovereign “piracy” by the enemies of free nations.

Of course, we should all be overjoyed that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Marine Paul Whelan, and the independent radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva have returned to the US, and that Kara-Murza and two other Russian dissidents were saved.

But the price for their release was huge: an FSB colonel who assassinated a Chechen national in Germany, another FSB agent who laundered money for the Kremlin, an operative who hacked into computers to make trades netting millions for Vladimir Putin’s coffers, another Russian agent who moved American ammunition into Russia, and four confirmed Russian spies held in western prisons.

Asymmetric Swaps

These are in no way symmetric swaps: Russians convicted of very serious crimes in impartial jury trials are increasingly being traded for completely innocent Western journalists, businesspersons, and athletes who were snatched at Putin’s command and convicted many months after capture in Russian kangaroo courts.

The same was true when American basketball star Brittany Griner was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Vicktor Bout, nicknamed “the merchant of death.”

These moves are nothing like the US-Soviet swaps during the 20th century Cold War, when actual American operatives and military agents were captured in Russia. We are trading innocents for hardened criminals involved in enabling totalitarian systems of mass murder.

The same holds for Biden’s September 2023 decision to release over $6 billion in Iranian assets, which were held sequestered in a South Korean account, in exchange for five innocent Americans held for years without just cause by Iran’s totalitarian theocracy.

Rather than “prisoner exchanges,” we should be calling them “criminals for hostages swaps.”

Hostage Diplomacy

The glaring problem with such “hostage diplomacy” is obvious: as Senator Mitt Romney said of the Iran deal, the appearance of paying more than $1 billion for each American freed will only encourage more hostage-taking.

Putin will be further emboldened to order more Russian agents and proxies to carry out assassinations, hacking, fraud, weapons trafficking, and attacks on democratic election systems because he can retrieve any of his agents who are caught and convicted: all he has to do is snatch some innocent Americans, Germans, or other Western citizens to use as bargaining chips.

This is a losing spiral: sovereign hostage-taking has been increasing for years, just like ransomware, and it is a bipartisan problem no matter who is in the White House. In 1985, Ronald Reagan infamously sent arms to Iran in exchange for US hostages held in Lebanon as part of an illegal complex larger deal. Short-term gain leads to long-term pain.

The situation is similar when terrorist groups take hostages. In his 2018 book on terrorism, economist and game theory expert Todd Sandler notes one study that found that 2.62 “additional abductions” resulted from concessions to get one hostage back.

The International Center for Counter-Terrorism concludes that rewarding terrorist kidnappers can “encourage imitation and become contagious.”

This is why, ironically, the Biden administration earlier this year began seriously considering a ban on paying ransomware attackers to release computing systems they have seized. But the White House and congressional leaders failed to follow through on this, caving to pressure from corporations and local governments that fear having no recourse when their systems are breached.

New International Hostage Game

Of course, hostage-taking has been part of warfare and hostile relations among nations for many centuries.

Yet medieval kings and queens responded very differently than Western authorities do now: when their innocent citizens were captured and held, they would often snatch innocents from the other side to use as bargaining chips.

Western nations have not done this because our systems of justice are not dictatorial and include habeas corpus, which is the basic right to a speedy and impartial trial. Thus, as Keir Giles from Chatham House told Newsweek, Putin can retrieve his “murderers, spies, and criminals” by taking Western hostages to trade for them, knowing that the US cannot “respond in kind.”

This central asymmetry is now the reason why the US and its allies are losing so badly in the new international hostage game.

To even the scales, American presidents may have to consider detaining Russians or Iranians of interest to their regimes whenever those dictators grab innocent Americans. This would require suspending habeas corpus for those foreign nationals we hold under special reprisal orders, and exchanging only them – not Russians, Iranians, or Chinese operatives already convicted of major crimes – in exchange for American victims.

In other words, we would need to copy Putin’s tactic of “stockpiling” prominent Americans to use as bargaining chips.

For example, when Putin seized and held Griner to use as a pawn in exchange for Russian criminals justly convicted in the US, we could have responded by seizing three more Russians closely connected with the Kremlin and suspected of shady dealings. Indefinite detentions of select foreign nationals held for months or years without trial might sound extreme; yet without such reprisals, we will see more innocent victims in Griner’s and Gershkovich’s former situation.

Legal Reforms

We could further strengthen this tit-for-tat response with legal reforms that also beat ransomware.

Outlawing all forms of payment for taking innocent American hostages and seizing control of computer systems is the most essential step. The law should include “waivers” or presidential permissions to pay only when hundreds of lives or hundreds of billions in assets are at stake, and should include criminal penalties for its violation, given the desperation payers endure.

When such a law is strictly enforced, sovereign adversaries seizing computers or human hostages will eventually realize that they are wasting their time and resources on such efforts.

So we should reconsider the policy announced by President Barack Obama in June 2015, which he broke and both Donald Trump and Biden rejected, that “the United States government will make no concessions to individuals or groups holding US nationals hostage.”

While this policy should not apply to exchanging prisoners of war, it can deter civilian hostage-taking because returning foreign civilians seized in reprisal is not a “concession.”

Beyond banning paying ransoms in all forms, we need to punish rogue regimes that snatch our citizens as political prisoners with other reprisals — such as destruction of military assets and even detention of their own friends working in the US.

The ultimate solution is to rid the Earth altogether of dictators who take innocents as political hostages, but that will probably require a global alliance of democratic nations of the sort outlined in my book, A League of Democracies.

John Davenport is Professor of Philosophy and Peace & Justice Studies at Fordham University.

He is the author of The Democracy Amendments, available through Amazon.com.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Defense Post.

The Defense Post aims to publish a wide range of high-quality opinion and analysis from a diverse array of people – do you want to send us yours? Click here to submit an op-ed.

The post Why the US and Its Allies Are Losing the New International Hostage Game appeared first on The Defense Post.

The aid includes $200 million in equipment that will be drawn from existing US military stocks and will reach the battlefield quickly, as well as about $1.5 billion in new orders that will take longer to arrive, the Defense Department said in a statement.

The assistance will provide Ukraine with several kinds of air defense munitions to protect against Russian strikes, artillery rounds, ammunition for HIMARS precision rocket launchers, and multiple kinds of anti-tank weapons, among other capabilities.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post that he was “deeply grateful” to his US counterpart Joe Biden, the US Congress, and the American people for the assistance.

The aid includes items that are “critical to strengthening Ukrainian defenders, as well as funding to sustain previously committed equipment from the United States,” he said.

Zelensky on Monday visited special forces in the border region of Kharkiv, where Moscow’s forces launched a surprise ground offensive in May but failed to make any major breakthroughs.

There, he “witnessed firsthand how such ongoing assistance allows us to save lives and protect people from Russian attacks,” the Ukrainian leader said.

I am deeply grateful to @POTUS Joe Biden, Congress and its both parties, and the entire American people for today’s announcement of two US military aid packages totaling $1.7 billion.

They include critical ammunition, including air defense ammunition, electronic warfare…

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 29, 2024

Battlefield Deadlock

The United States has been a key military backer of Ukraine, committing more than $55 billion in weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

But prior to late April, Washington had announced only limited new aid for Ukraine this year — a $300 million package made possible by using money that the Pentagon had saved on other purchases.

Congress had not approved large-scale funding for Kyiv for nearly a year and a half but finally took action in April after months of acrimonious debate, passing legislation authorizing $95 billion in aid, including $61 billion for Ukraine.

Washington has since provided multiple new packages, but Ukrainian Zelensky has said Russia was able to take the initiative on the battlefield while his country waited for the approval of new aid.

On Monday, Russia said its forces had captured the village of Vovche in eastern Ukraine — the latest in a string of recent front-line advances claimed by Moscow.

The Ukrainian military said Monday that it had repelled six Russian attacks on the Kharkiv front line over the past day, including at Vovchansk, a small town that Moscow’s forces have been trying to capture since May.

Now grinding through a third year of fighting, neither Kyiv nor Moscow have managed to swing the conflict decisively in their favor, even though Moscow’s forces have gained ground in recent months.

The post US Announces $1.7B in New Security Assistance for Ukraine appeared first on The Defense Post.

The US and China in November held rare talks on nuclear arms control, part of a bid to ease mistrust ahead of a summit between leader Joe Biden and Xi Jinping.

Further dialogue had not been publicly announced since, with a White House official in January urging Beijing to respond “to some of our more substantive ideas on risk reduction.”

But China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday said recent US sales of arms to self-ruled Taiwan were “seriously undermining the political atmosphere for continued arms control consultations between the two sides.”

“The US has… continued its arms sales to Taiwan, and taken a series of negative actions that seriously damage China’s core interests and undermine political mutual trust,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

“For this reason, China has decided to suspend negotiations with the United States on a new round of arms control and non-proliferation consultations,” he added.

The Pentagon in a congressionally mandated report last October said that China was developing its nuclear arsenal more quickly than the United States had earlier anticipated.

China possessed more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May 2023 and is likely to have more than 1,000 by 2030, it said.

The United States currently possesses about 3,700 nuclear warheads, trailing Russia’s roughly 4,500, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which counts 410 warheads for China.

“China is willing to maintain communication with the United States on international arms control issues on the basis of mutual respect,” Lin said.

“But the United States must respect China’s core interests and create necessary conditions for dialogue,” he warned.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but it has remained Taiwan’s most important partner and biggest arms supplier, sparking repeated condemnations from China.

Washington in June approved two military sales to Taiwan worth approximately $300 million in total, mostly of spare and repair parts for the island’s F-16 fighter jets.

The post China Says Halted Nuclear Arms Talks With US Over Taiwan Weapons Sales appeared first on The Defense Post.

“If I start to do, to say anything that makes it possible to connect me to ongoing political debates in any allied country, then I will just weaken the Alliance,” Stoltenberg said when asked about Biden during a news conference at NATO headquarters.

“I have had, and continue to have, a very good working relationship with President Biden,” he said.

NATO next week holds a summit in Washington marking the 75th anniversary of its creation.

The gathering will take place as political clouds gather over 81-year-old Biden, who last Thursday put in a disastrous performance in a debate against Republican challenger Donald Trump.

The US president, speaking at a meager volume, lost his train of thought at times and stumbled over words, sparking panic in his Democratic Party about his energy and mental acuity.

Biden, who has rebuffed subsequent suggestions he should stand aside for another, younger Democratic candidate, will give an interview on American television later Friday.

“I met him just a couple of weeks ago,” Stoltenberg said.

“We had good meetings in the Oval Office. We made progress in the preparations for the upcoming NATO summit, on Ukraine, on deterrence, on defense, and many other issues.

“And I welcome his strong personal leadership, on the support for Ukraine, on the support for NATO,” he said.

The White House has said Biden will hold a news conference during next week’s NATO summit.

The US presidential election takes place on November 5, with the winner to take office in January next year.

The post NATO Chief Sidesteps Questions on Biden’s Condition appeared first on The Defense Post.

In response to the Russian offensive in northeast Ukraine, the United States and some other countries have allowed Kyiv to use Western-donated weapons to strike inside Russian territory.

“They’re authorized to be used in proximity to the border when they’re being used on the other side of the border to attack specific targets in Ukraine,” Biden told ABC News in interview remarks released Thursday.

“We’re not authorizing strikes 200 miles into Russia and we’re not authorizing strikes on Moscow, on the Kremlin.”

US officials said last week that Washington had partially lifted its restrictions to enable Ukraine to defend its eastern Kharkiv region, which borders Russia.

The change in the US stance was attributed by officials to Russia’s daily pounding of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city.

Germany also said it had given Ukraine permission to fire German-delivered weapons at targets in Russia.

Biden said the US-supplied weapons were for striking “just across the border, (from) where they’re receiving significant fire from conventional weapons used by the Russians to go into Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.”

The president was speaking in France where he is attending events marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

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Biden has come under increasing pressure from a desperate Ukraine to ease his ban, but had so far resisted amid fears it could drag NATO into direct conflict with Moscow.

“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use US-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them,” a US official said on condition of anonymity.

“Our policy with respect to prohibiting the use of ATACMS or long range strikes inside of Russia has not changed,” the official said, referring to long-range missiles recently sent by Washington to Kyiv.

A second US official confirmed Biden’s change of policy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressing Kyiv’s supporters – chiefly the United States – to allow it to use the longer-range weaponry they supply to hit targets on Russian soil.

Some countries including Britain and the Netherlands say Kyiv has the right to use their weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had hinted on Wednesday that Biden could change course.

Blinken said the United States had “adapted and adjusted” as the “battlefield has changed,” as he spoke to reporters on a visit to Moldova on the eve of NATO talks in Prague.

Blinken, who traveled to Kyiv earlier this month to see the increasingly grave situation as Russia pushes forward towards Kharkiv, had been widely reported to be pressing Biden to ease the rules.

Ahead of the NATO meeting, which starts with a dinner on Thursday, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said repeatedly it was time for members to reconsider those limits because they hampered Kyiv’s ability to defend itself.

French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to shift the dial forward on Tuesday when he said Ukraine should be allowed to “neutralize” bases in Russia used to launch strikes.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, however, remained less sure, saying Ukraine should act within the law – and Berlin had not supplied weapons that could hit Russia anyway.

Pressure has also been mounting ahead of a series of key meetings in Europe in coming weeks where Kyiv’s plight will be in focus.

Biden will attend ceremonies in France marking the World War II D-Day landings in early June where Ukraine’s Zelensky will also be present.

The US president will also meet leaders of the world’s top economies at the G7 summit in Italy.

The post Biden Lets Ukraine Hit Russia With US Arms to Defend Kharkiv appeared first on The Defense Post.

Despite global outrage over the attack in which 45 people were killed, the White House insisted on Tuesday that it did not believe Israel had launched the major operation that Biden has warned against.

John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesman, said that Biden had been consistent and was not “moving the stick” on what defined an all-out military offensive by key ally Israel.

But Biden faces a difficult balancing act both domestically and internationally over Gaza, especially in a year when the 81-year-old Democrat is locked in an election battle with Donald Trump.

“Biden wants to appear tough on Rafah, and has really tried to be stern with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, but in an election year, his red lines are increasingly blurred,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, told AFP.

“I think he’ll continue shifting those lines, ducking and weaving, largely in response to events on the ground.”

‘Smash Into Rafah’

Facing US campus protests over his support for Israel, Biden said earlier this month that he would not supply Israel with weapons for a major military operation in Rafah, and he halted a shipment of bombs.

Yet he has since taken no action even as Israel has stepped up air attacks and, as of Tuesday, moved tanks into central Rafah.

Instead, the White House has largely retreated to arguing about what does, and does not, constitute an invasion.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said last week there was “no mathematical formula” and said that “what we’re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction.”

At the White House on Tuesday, his colleague Kirby faced intense questioning over the Israeli strike, which sparked a fire at a displaced persons camp in which dozens of people burned to death.

Kirby said the deaths were “heartbreaking” and “horrific” but again said there would be no change in policy towards Israel.

“We have not seen them smash into Rafah,” he said.

“We have not seen them go in with large units, large numbers of troops, in columns and formations in some sort of coordinated maneuver against multiple targets on the ground.”

But internationally the pressure is growing on Biden, a self-described Zionist who has stuck by Netanyahu despite deep disagreements since the war began with the October 7 Hamas attack.

Questions are mounting over how long the United States can tolerate an Israeli assault on Rafah when the International Court of Justice — the UN’s top court, of which both the US and Israel are members — ordered it to stop.

‘Balancing Act’

Political pressure is also mounting on Biden at home.

Protests against his support for Israel have roiled university campuses across the United States, while many on the left wing of his Democratic Party also oppose his stance.

Republicans however have assailed Biden over what they say is his faltering support for Israel, with US House Speaker Mike Johnson inviting Netanyahu to address Congress.

“It is indeed a difficult balancing act,” Gordon Gray, a former US ambassador who is now a professor at George Washington University, told AFP.

“Threading the proverbial needle — as the Biden administration is apparently seeking to do — will only disappoint voters who feel strongly about the issue one way or another.”

Gray however said he believed Biden’s decades-old support for Israel meant he would unlikely change his position, saying he was a “rare politician who is acting out of genuine conviction rather than for his own electoral benefit.”

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The aid, which was announced at a press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, is part of a $61 billion package that Washington approved several weeks ago following months of delays in Congress.

Blinken said the purpose of the aid was “to provide weapons today” as well as invest in Ukrainian infrastructure and help Ukraine purchase military equipment from other countries.

Kuleba meanwhile repeated that Ukraine “urgently” needs seven more air defense systems and said the northeastern region of Kharkiv, which came under Russian attack last week, needs two systems.

He also said Ukraine needed faster deliveries of weapons promised by allied countries.

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