WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States will send four sophisticated medium-range rocket and ammunition systems to Ukraine to help try to halt Russian progress in its country’s Donbas region, but it will take at least three weeks to obtain precision weapons and train. troops on the battlefield, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense policy, said the United States has received assurances from the highest levels of government that Ukraine will use the rockets to defend its nation and will not launch them into Russia. The agreement highlights the US concern to provoke a wider war with Russia while still providing Ukraine with the weapons it has desperately requested in recent weeks.
Rocket systems are part of a new $ 700 million security assistance package for Ukraine from the U.S. that also includes helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapons systems, radars, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more. .
When asked if weapons arrive too late to make a difference, as Russia moves east and south, Kahl said he doesn’t think so.
“It’s an intense struggle,” he said during a briefing at the Pentagon. “We believe that these additional capabilities will arrive in a relevant period of time and will allow the Ukrainians to be very precise in guiding the kind of things they need for the current struggle.”
The U.S. decision to provide advanced rocket systems seeks to strike a balance between a desire to help Ukraine fight fierce Russian artillery bombing without providing weapons that will allow Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia and trigger an escalation of the war.
In a guest interview published Tuesday evening by The New York Times, President Joe Biden confirmed that “it would provide Ukrainians with more advanced rocket and ammunition systems that would allow them to more accurately attack key targets on Ukraine’s battlefield.” .
Biden had said on Monday that the US would not send “rocket systems that could attack Russia” to Ukraine. Any weapons system can fire on Russia if it is close enough to the border. The aid package unveiled on Wednesday would send what the United States considers medium-range rockets: they can generally travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers), officials said.
“Ukrainians have assured us that they will not use these systems against targets on Russian territory,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. “There is a strong bond of trust between Ukraine and the United States.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that the United States is “deliberately and diligently pouring fuel into the fire.” He added that the Kremlin does not trust Kyiv’s assurances that US-supplied multi-rocket launch systems will not be used to attack Russia.
“To trust (someone), you have to have experience with situations where those promises were fulfilled. Unfortunately, there is no such experience,” Peskov said.
The expectation is that Ukraine will be able to use rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where both can intercept Russian artillery and eliminate Russian positions in cities where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk.
Sievierodonetsk is important for Russian efforts to capture the Donbas before more Western weapons arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense. The city, located 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of the Russian border, is located in an area that is the last pocket under the control of the Ukrainian government in the Luhansk region of Donbas.
Biden, in his New York Times essay, added: “We are not encouraging or allowing Ukraine to go beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.”
It is the 11th package approved so far and will be the first to take advantage of the $ 40 billion in security and financial assistance recently approved by Congress. Rocket systems would be part of the Pentagon’s withdrawal authority, so they would involve taking weapons from the U.S. inventory and bringing 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 to 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 it 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. of the plan.
Since the war began in February, the United States and its allies have tried to follow a narrow line: send Ukraine the weapons needed to fight Russia, but fail to offer aid that will inflame Russian President Vladimir Putin and spark a conflict. wider than it could spill. to other parts of Europe.
Over time, however, the United States and its allies have increased the number of weapons entering Ukraine, as the struggle has shifted from Russia’s wider campaign to take the capital, Kyiv and other areas, to skirmishes. nearest contact for small plots of land in Ukraine. east and south.
To this end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the West to send multiple rocket launch systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to help stop Russia’s destruction of Donbas cities. The rockets have a longer range than the shell artillery systems that the US has provided to Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to attack Russian troops from a distance out of the reach of Russian artillery systems.
“We are fighting for Ukraine to receive all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and to start moving faster and more confidently towards the expulsion of the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said in a recent speech.
Ukraine needs multiple rocket launch systems, said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO’s top commander from 2013 to 2016.
“These are very important skills that we have not yet achieved. And not only do they need them, but they have been very ruinous in explaining that they want them,” Breedlove said. “We need to get serious about supplying this army so that it can do what the world demands of it: fight alone against a world superpower on the battlefield.”
Russia has been making gradual progress in the Donbas as it tries to take over the remaining sections of the region that are not yet controlled by Russia-backed separatists.
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AP diplomatic writer Matthew Lee. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani and Associated Press journalist Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.