Ukrainian army HIMARS.
Via social media
For more than two years after Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden drew a red line for Ukrainian forces.
The administration would provide the Ukrainians with precision munitions including aerial glide bombs, Harpoon cruise missiles, M30/31 rockets for High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and Army Tactical Missile System rockets.
The Ukrainians could use these munitions against Russian targets on Ukrainian soil. But if they struck targets inside Russia, the White House might withhold future aid.
But recent Russian strikes on Kharkiv, just 25 miles from the border in northeastern Ukraine, helped change Biden’s mind. A month of indiscriminate strikes has displaced tens of thousands of civilians and killed scores of them. On May 25, the Russians bombed a home-improvement store in the city of 1.4 million, killing 18 people including two children.
On Friday, the White House erased its red line.
That night, the Ukrainian army reportedly aimed some of its wheeled HIMARS launchers at the Russian city of Belgorod, 20 miles north of the Russia-Ukraine border in southern Russia.
“This is a welcome step that will allow us now to better protect Ukraine and Ukrainians from Russian terror and attempts to expand the war,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wrote right before potentially dozens of 660-pound rockets, each ranging as far as 57 miles with 50 pounds of high explosives, rained on Belgorod.
Russian media captured the sounds of air-raid sirens and the fiery launches of air-defense batteries as the Ukrainian rockets thundered toward the city of 384,000. State media claimed air-defense batteries shot down 14 rockets, and there is some evidence of rocket fragments on the ground.
It’s unclear how much damage the raid inflicted—and, more to the point, how much damage it inflicted on military targets.
It’s obvious what the Ukrainians are trying to accomplish, however. Belgorod and the surrounding towns are a base of operations for the Russian army’s northern grouping of forces, which has been attacking Ukrainian border towns since May 10, possibly aiming to break through Ukrainian lines and drive toward Kharkiv.
In three weeks of hard fighting, this grouping of Russian troops has—at great cost—captured a chain of border villages and turned the town of Vovchansk, a few miles south of the border, into a rubble-strewn battlefield. Swift action by Ukrainian reinforcements—the 36th Marine Brigade, 71st Jager Brigade and elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade, among other units—has halted the Russian advance.
Belgorod has only grown in importance as the battle grinds on. There are so many Russian casualties in area hospitals that the local healthcare system “is in a state of collapse,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted.
There are signs the Russians are regrouping for a fresh assault. Troop movements in the towns of Graivoron, Borisovka and Proletarsky, a few miles west of Belgorod, are “possibly indicating the formation of a strike group in Belgorod Oblast,” according to CDS.
In striking Belgorod and the surrounding oblast, the Ukrainians erode the northern grouping of forces—and this purported new strike group—without having to fighting the Russians street by street in Vovchansk.
To be clear, Ukrainian forces could strike Belgorod before this week, but only using locally-made or European munitions. In fact, Belgorod has been a target since April 2022, when Ukrainian army attack helicopters slipped across the border and rocketed an oil facility in the city.
But Ukraine’s best and most numerous deep-strike munitions are made in America. A truly sustainable and damaging bombardment of Russian bases in Belgorod begs for HIMARS, ATACMS and U.S.-supplied glide bombs.
The Ukrainians finally have the green light to proceed. “I am grateful for the vital support,” Zelensky wrote.
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Sources:
1. Volodymyr Zelensky: https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1796628936127910194
2. U.K. government: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/russias-bombardment-of-kharkiv-is-having-an-appalling-impact-on-the-regions-civilians-uk-statement-to-the-osce
3. TASS: https://tass.com/defense/1796819
4. Center for Defense Strategies: https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-280524; https://cdsdailybrief.substack.com/p/russias-war-on-ukraine-270524