The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region.
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The rocket systems are part of a new $700 million tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from the US that will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more, according to two senior administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the weapons package that will be formally unveiled on Wednesday.
The US decision to provide the advanced rocket systems tries to strike a balance between the desire to help Ukraine battle ferocious Russian artillery barrages while not providing arms that could allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia and trigger an escalation in the war.
In a guest essay published Tuesday evening in The New York Times, US President Joe Biden confirmed that he's decided to "provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine."
Biden had said Monday that the US would not send Ukraine "rocket systems that can strike into Russia." Any weapons system can shoot into Russia if it's close enough to the border. The aid package expected to be unveiled Wednesday would send what the US considers medium-range rockets – they generally can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers), the officials said.
The Ukrainians have assured US officials that they will not fire rockets into Russian territory, according to the senior administration officials. One official noted that the advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian assets inside Ukraine.
The expectation is that Ukraine could use the rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where they could both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk.
Sievierodonetsk is important to Russian efforts to capture the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine's defense. The city, which is 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of the Russian border, is in an area that is the last pocket under Ukrainian government control in the Luhansk region of the Donbas.
Biden in his New York Times' essay added: "We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia."
It's the 11th package approved so far and will be the first to tap the $40 billion in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress. The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking weapons from US inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would also need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two.
Officials said the plan is to send Ukraine the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is mounted on a truck and can carry a container with six rockets. The system can launch a medium-range rocket, which is the current plan, but is also capable of firing a longer-range missile, the Army Tactical Missile System, which has a range of about 190 miles (300 kilometers) and is not part of the plan.
Since the war began in February, the US and its allies have tried to walk a narrow line: send Ukraine weapons needed to fight off Russia, but stop short of providing aid that will inflame Russian President Vladimir Putin and trigger a broader conflict that could spill over into other parts of Europe.
Over time, however, the US and allies have amped up the weaponry going into Ukraine, as the fight has shifted from Russia's broader campaign to take the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, to more close-contact skirmishes for small pieces of land in the east and south.
To that end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading with the West to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to help stop Russia's destruction of towns in the Donbas. The rockets have a longer range than the howitzer artillery systems that the US has provided Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian troops from a distance outside the range of Russia's artillery systems.
"We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers," Zelenskyy said in a recent address.
Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists that the Russian navy will ensure the safe passage of ships carrying Ukraine's wheat export supplies into the Mediterranean Sea if Ukraine demines its territorial waters.
"If the demining problem is resolved, and we have been drawing the attention of our Western colleagues to it for weeks, then in the open sea Russian naval forces will ensure unhindered passage of these ships to the Mediterranean Sea and further to their destinations," Lavrov was quoted as saying during a visit to Bahrain.
Lavrov accused Western countries of "doing PR on food security issues" and creating "artificial problems," referring to foreign ports being closed to Russian ships as part of sanctions over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier last week, the UN voiced concerns over the growing food crisis caused by the war as Russia and Ukraine account for nearly 30% of the world's wheat supply.
Also on Tuesday, Russia widened its gas cuts to Europe with Gazprom saying it will turn off supplies to several "unfriendly" countries which have refused to accept Moscow's rubles-for-gas payment scheme.
The move by the Russian gas giant is the latest retaliation to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow, escalating its economic battle with Brussels and pushing up European gas prices.
Gazprom said it had fully cut off gas supplies to Dutch gas trader GasTerra. It later said it would also stop as of June 1 gas flows to Denmark's Orsted and to Shell Energy for its contract on gas supplies to Germany, after both failed to make payments in rubles.
The announcements follow Monday's agreement by European Union leaders to cut the European Union's imports of Russian oil by 90% by year-end, the bloc's toughest response to date to the invasion.
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Meanwhile, three more nations joined an international investigation team probing war crimes in Ukraine, and the International Criminal Court prosecutor said he plans to open an office in Kyiv amid ongoing calls for those responsible for atrocities since Russia's invasion to be brought to justice.
Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia signed an agreement during a two-day coordination meeting in The Hague to join Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine in the Joint Investigation Team that will help coordinate the sharing of evidence of atrocities through European Union judicial cooperation agency Eurojust.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said the teamwork underscores the international community's commitment to the rule of law.
"I think it shows that there is this common front of legality that is absolutely essential, not just for Ukraine ... but for the continuation of peace and security all over the world," he said.
Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the AP and PBS series "Frontline" have verified 273 potential war crimes.
Zelenskyy has denounced killings of civilians as "genocide" and "war crimes," while Biden has called Putin "a war criminal" who should be brought to trial.
Ukraine's prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said that her office has already opened some 15,000 criminal investigations related to the war and identified over 500 suspects, including Russian ministers, military commanders and propagandists. She said her office was ready to proceed against some 80 of them.
Last week, in the first case of its kind linked to the war, a Ukrainian court sentenced a captured Russian soldier to the maximum penalty of life in prison for killing a civilian. On Tuesday, a court in Ukraine convicted two Russian soldiers of war crimes for the shelling of civilian buildings and sentenced both to 11.5 years in prison.
