Are ATACMS missiles ‘too late’ for Ukrainian strikes on Russia?

Kyiv, Ukraine – Washington’s decision to let Kyiv use high-precision Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMSs) to strike targets in Russia came “too late”, says Vitaly, a wounded Ukrainian serviceman who needs crutches to get around central Kyiv.

He thinks that outgoing United States President Joe Biden “should have let us use them without any limits two years ago”.

“We were chasing the Russians out of [the eastern region of] Kharkiv, and could have brought the war to them, to their territory,” the fair-haired 29-year-old told Al Jazeera, withholding his last name in accordance with wartime regulations.

Since then, Moscow has mobilised hundreds of thousands of men, boosted arms production, secured the supply of weaponry from Iran and North Korea, and bypassed Western sanctions to import dual-purpose items such as chips used in drones.

“It’s too late, because now, Russians are emboldened. Their economy works for the war, their people are zombified into enlisting and get loads of money for it, and we are losing a little every day,” Vitaly said.

Washington provided the first ATACMS long-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine last year but did not let Kyiv use them for strikes deep inside Russia.

Biden’s decision was reported by several Western media outlets on Sunday. The White House and the Pentagon have refused to confirm it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that “strikes are not made with words”.

“Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” he said.

The Kremlin has predictably lashed out at Washington and Kyiv.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine, which Russian officials have previously said is a measure “connected with the escalation course of our Western adversaries”.

While the revision had been in the works, the timing of Putin’s signing is seen as a warning after the US allowed the Ukrainian attacks.

The doctrine states that assaults on Russia by countries supported by a nuclear power are to be seen as a joint attack on it.

The White House’s decision on the missile strikes “is a qualitatively new circle of tension and qualitatively new situation from the viewpoint” of the US involvement in this conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters on Monday.

Hungary and Slovakia, whose governments tilt towards the Kremlin, also lambasted the move.

‘ATACMS can’t change anything principally’

Some Ukrainian analysts say Biden’s decision may have followed his preoccupation with his political legacy.

“This is a final entry for memoirs and an attempt to say ‘I did all I could’ before leaving,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.

“Plus, there is a factor of strategic uncertainty for Russia, but it won’t work any more,” he said.

Biden rushed the supply of US military aid before leaving office in January, while President-elect Donald Trump and his fledgling team are largely sceptical about further support to Ukraine.

They advocate for a prompt peace deal with Moscow that will entail the loss of occupied Ukrainian areas in the east and the south, and, possibly, recognition of them as part of Russia.

ATACMSs are surface-to-surface ballistic missiles with a range of 300km (186 miles). They fly high up into the atmosphere to gain speed before hitting their targets and are therefore hard to intercept by air defence systems.

They can carry cluster warheads that consist of hundreds of small bombs that explode over a large area, or a single warhead that can destroy large, fortified structures.

But they are far from being a game-changing “wonder weapon”, analysts warn.

“ATACMS, just like any other type of missiles, can’t change anything principally, and the damage they cause is always limited, especially when there’s too few of them,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

Russia has long anticipated Washington’s permission and already removed large groups of servicemen, arms depots and heavy bombers from the areas that can be hit by ATACMS, he said.

The missiles, however, can strike bridges, fuel depots or airstrips in western Russia so that there is a “pretty picture” for Western television viewers, said Mitrokhin.

However, Kyiv’s biggest problem is not the missiles or the arrival of some 12,000 North Korean soldiers in the western Russian region of Kursk, where they help Moscow push out Ukrainian forces, he said.

The problem is the configuration of the front line that gets longer while the number of Ukrainian soldiers defending them is decreasing dramatically, he said.

“That’s why Russia is winning, first of all, with the main index – the number of soldiers on the battlefield,” Mitrokhin said.

Ukraine also has a “strange” organisation of defence lines, and faces “huge” problems in decision-making amid conflicts between top brass, front-line officers and servicemen in the trenches, he said.

Kyiv centred its defence lines on the cities and industrial towns in the rust belt region of Donbas, while Russian forces use this “tactical failure to simply walk across the fields around them”, Mitrokhin said.

But Ukraine can use whatever arms it can get.

“The situation on the front lines is difficult, but we need to follow the ‘better-late-than-never’ rule” when it comes to ATACMS, according to Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces.

Russian weaponry has already “surpassed” Ukraine’s, he said.

For example, it equipped gliding heavy bombs with engines and propellers.

Bombers drop them far from the front line and the reach of Ukrainian air defence systems, letting them fly for more than 100km (62 miles).

“We need parity at the very least,” Romanenko told Al Jazeera.

Ukraine’s military woes

Meanwhile, Ukraine has still not managed to start producing basic arms and ammunition, such as powder and artillery shells.

The shortage or absence of Ukrainian-made weaponry is exacerbated by the post-Cold War decrease of arms manufacturing in the West.

While the West pledged to provide a million shells to Kyiv within two years, Russian military plants churn them out nonstop, and North Korea supplied five million Soviet-era shells, Romanenko said.

However, volunteer groups that mushroomed throughout Ukraine compensate for the lack of conventional weaponry with the production of hundreds of thousands of drones and other devices.

But Ukraine’s largest problem is a lack of trained servicemen who can replace the exhausted and dispirited veterans.

Kyiv faces a dire shortage of servicemen despite a ruthless and highly unpopular mobilisation campaign.

It urgently needs to spur up mobilisation and training of servicemen, Romanenko said.

“Otherwise, the situation will deteriorate quite seriously,” he concluded.