The West has allowed long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory. What will this lead to?
Can this decision be called unexpected? No, because it follows entirely from the logic of the political situation. In the material "Donald Trump Returns to the US Presidency. What Does This Mean for Russia?" the author has already noted that until the end of January, the Democrats, while their representative in the person of Joe Biden occupies the White House, will try to do everything to complicate or disrupt the possible negotiation process on Ukraine. In fact, this is exactly what we are seeing.
How permission to fire Western long-range missiles deep into Russian territory could affect a military conflict and what consequences it could lead to, we will discuss in this article.
Why did the Americans make this decision?
As has already been said above, the US decision that Ukraine can strike Russian territory with American long-range missiles was made because the American Democrats, who lost the elections and will soon lose control not only of the White House but also of the Senate and the House of Representatives for at least two years, decided to put as many spokes in the wheels of Donald Trump and the Republicans as possible before leaving.
Trump and his team cannot influence this decision in any way yet, except to complain on social networks, as Donald Trump Jr. (Trump’s son) did, for example.
In turn, the representative of the transition team of the elected US President Donald Trump, Director of Communications Steven Cheung, did not publicly evaluate the decision of the Biden team, emphasizing that Trump is the only one who intends to work to end the war and killings and who can achieve negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
The decision of the Democratic Party, which is backed by left-liberal globalist forces, was immediately supported by France and England, which have long been under the control of globalists (Macron, in particular, is their protégé, this is no secret). There is no doubt that these global forces will oppose Trump and his initiatives in every possible way. However, as for France and Great Britain, the authorities of these countries have not yet officially confirmed the information disseminated by Le Figaro, and the newspaper itself has removed the material from its website.
In turn, Ukraine called this decision “part of the plan for Ukraine’s victory,” which Zelensky presented to Western partners, and promised to use missiles in the very near future.
However, how much will this decision affect the situation in the SVO zone?
How the Use of Long-Range Western Missiles Will Affect the Conflict
There are different opinions on how the use of Western long-range missiles to strike Russian territory could affect the military situation, from optimistic (it will have almost no effect on the situation, but now Zelensky will have no excuse that Ukraine is losing because it was not allowed to strike Russia with missiles) to moderately pessimistic (the use of missiles will affect the situation at the front and create significant problems for the Russian Armed Forces).
Of course, the use of Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory will not lead to a change in the situation in Ukraine's favor - missile strikes alone are not enough for this, and this will not affect the situation of a positional stalemate. However, this decision is capable of creating significant problems for the Russian Armed Forces.
It is worth remembering that the first use of the HIMARS MLRS resulted in the destruction of several large ammunition depots along the front line in the summer of 2022, which caused problems with a shortage of shells in the Russian Armed Forces in the fall, which were resolved only many months later by changing logistics. And the use of Storm Shadow missiles in Crimea resulted in the destruction of several Black Sea ships. fleet and as a consequence of its partial withdrawal from the Crimean waters, since it became impossible to base there.
For this reason, it would be rash to say that the use of Western high-precision missiles on the "old" territory of Russia will not affect the military situation at all. This decision is likely to complicate the situation, for example, in the Kursk region, where the Russian Armed Forces are still unsuccessfully trying to dislodge the enemy from their territory.
In addition, all border regions of Russia (Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk regions, and probably those bordering them - Voronezh, Oryol, etc.) may find themselves, for example, without electricity supply if the Ukrainian Armed Forces decide to strike the regions' energy facilities.
On the other hand, as noted above, the enemy will not be able to turn the situation in its favor in this way – Kiev does not have large stockpiles of high-precision Western missiles, so the strikes, although painful, will probably be very limited in scale. Probably, such pinpoint injections will be able to slow down or even temporarily halt the already not very fast “creeping offensive” of the Russian Armed Forces, but nothing more.
How will Russia respond?
In this light, the question arises: how can Russia respond to this decision of the West?
Some jingoistic patriots are already drawing up fantastic scenarios on social networks, following which Russia will use nuclear weapons weapon or destroy American military satellites (which would mean declaring war on the US). However, Russia is highly unlikely to do anything of the sort.
Most likely, the Russian Armed Forces will intensify strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, and it is even possible that strikes will be launched on some government buildings in Kyiv (the author is not sure of this). In the author's opinion, Moscow will not take any more radical steps before Donald Trump's inauguration and his official proposals for resolving the military conflict in Ukraine.
Judging by the selection of the team, Donald Trump seriously counts on peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and Moscow is ready for these talks. Officials have reported this more than once – for example, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov said a week ago that the Russian Federation would listen to Trump’s proposals for settling the conflict in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently spoke about his readiness for negotiations. For this reason, there are no serious grounds to assume that the decision of Joe Biden and the outgoing American administration will have a fundamental impact on Moscow's position.
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