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He said that the new shipment of weapons “will enable them to strike key targets with greater accuracy on the battlefield in Ukraine.”
The officials said the systems the United States is sending to Ukraine will be equipped with munitions that allow Ukraine to fire missiles about 49 miles away. This is well below the systems’ maximum range, but far greater than any that have been sent to Ukraine so far.
The new security assistance package, which will be officially announced on Wednesday, will also include air surveillance radars, additional Javelin anti-tank weapons, anti-armor weapons, artillery shells, helicopters, tactical vehicles and spare parts to help the Ukrainians continue to maintain equipment. Officials said.
However, Biden has sought to clarify US goals in Ukraine and has been careful to note that the US is not looking to engage Russia directly.
Biden said, “We do not seek war between NATO and Russia. As much as I do not agree with Mr. Putin, and find his actions infuriating, the United States will not attempt to oust him in Moscow,” Biden said, nearly two months later. After declaring in Warsaw, Poland, that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power.”
CNN previously reported that US officials had been debating for weeks whether to send advanced missile systems to Ukraine, because they could strike much further than any weapons they already had. The weapons’ long range, which is technically capable of striking Russian territory, has raised concerns that Russia will view the shipments as provocative.
“As long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly involved in this conflict, whether by sending American forces to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces,” Biden wrote in the opinion piece. “We do not encourage or enable Ukraine to strike outside its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.”
Last Friday, a prominent Russian TV presenter warned that sending long-range missile systems to Ukraine would “cross a red line” that would “provoke a harsh response from Russia”. But the Biden administration has made clear that it will not send munitions for the highly mobile artillery missile system that can strike deep into the Russian sovereign territory.
“I think the position of the United States is that they want to give all the help we can to the Ukrainians without escalating the situation to the point where the war is spreading or going in a terrible direction,” Defense Minister Christine Wormout said earlier. Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the United States has accepted some risk to its willingness as weapons continue to be shipped from DoD stockpiles to Ukraine, Wormott said, but not a risk the Pentagon considers too high.
“We’ve really gone about trying to provide whatever policymakers think is necessary to get to the Ukrainians. And we’ve taken some risk to our preparedness — not an unacceptable level of risk at all, but I think we will continue to do that,” she said while speaking at an Atlantic Council event on the role of The army in the national defense strategy.
The president said US officials “currently see no indication that Russia intends to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, even though Russia’s occasionally rhetoric to destabilize a nuclear weapon is extremely dangerous and irresponsible.”
“Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be totally unacceptable to us as well as to the rest of the world and would have disastrous consequences,” Biden wrote.
This story was updated with additional information Tuesday.
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