The United States will soon officially notify Ukraine of its permission to use ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles inside Russia.

The War Zone reported on this with reference to the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.

Currently, the U.S. government is expected to officially announce the decision, which will allow Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles inside Russia.

“I talked to Blinken two days ago, and he is traveling with his counterpart from the UK to Kyiv to basically tell them that they will allow them to hit Russia with ATACMS,” Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated.

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[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're right about why he took Crimea.

He tried to take Ukraine because Xi had finished subjugating Hong Kong and said he'd be moving on Taiwan soon, putin didn't want to look like the weaker partner, and if both moved at the same time they were positive the west would be paralyzed by fear, Afghanistan was already proof the west was weak.

His miscalculation was 2 fold: 1. Xi didn't understand how naval power worked, the PLAN needed another decade minimum to credibly threaten Taiwan, 2. Russia's army was decimated by decades of corruption itself.

We got lucky, if big daddy z took that ride the west would be in a bad place right now.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We got lucky, if big daddy z took that ride the west would be in a bad place right now.

I'm not so sure. Taking Crimea, but leaving the rest of Ukraine a sovereign state broke the pattern of historical European prelude to war.

Napoleon started with the Italian campaign, consolidated power in France, pushed through the Czech and Austrian armies into Russia.
Hitler invaded Poland, then Denmark, then Norway, then Belgium

Putin, by stopping at Crimea, made this look like a localized dispute between two sovereign nations, not the conquest of the entire nation, with more to follow. Had Putin taken all of Ukraine in 2014, that would look very much like a Napoleon or Hitler seeking European domination. The world would have responded very differently I think.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

He would have had no choice, not taking ukraine would have required every country to start arming, Europe would have tooled up, Sweden and Finland too, they weren't thrilled with Russia before this.

Yeah putin might have imagined he'd keep Ukraine subjugated by fear alone, but they were moving to the western sphere ever since maidan, that was unlikely.

Putin was trying to command the tides to withdraw, that's futile, it's all over already.