Report: US-Altered Rocket Systems Given to Ukraine Don't Shoot Into Russia

The Pentagon secretly modified the advanced rocket systems it sent to Ukraine, ensuring the missiles couldn't fire into Russia, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

According to defense officials, the U.S. has supplied Kyiv with 20 of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) since June. But the alterations were made to reduce the risk of a dangerous escalation of war.

The modifications, which were previously undisclosed, demonstrate the extent to which the Biden administration has gone to balance its backing for Ukraine's armed forces — against the risk of escalation with Russia and the apprehensions among American officials that Kyiv might break its vow not to hit Russian territory with U.S.-provided weapons, according to the Journal.

In September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that "if Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line and will become a direct party to the conflict."

Experts have debated the wisdom of the U.S. decision, with Charles Kupchan, the top National Security Council official for Europe during the Obama administration, telling the Journal "the United States should avoid encouraging or facilitating a Ukrainian effort to fully expel Russian forces from all of its territory, including Crimea, a war aim that would run too high a risk of prompting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to undertake even more reckless actions, including the possible use of nuclear weapons."

Conversely, by preventing Kyiv from possessing long-range missiles and launchers that can fire into Russia, the West has arguably provided Moscow a free hand to shoot missiles into Ukraine from Crimea and its own territory and to launch drone attacks, without fear that Ukraine could strike back. 

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who served as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's secretary-general from 2009-14, told the Journal that Putin "has accelerated the war by targeting civilian infrastructure, including the energy grid. Potentially, we are now facing a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine, and we have not adapted."

Rasmussen also stressed that "if you are to stop Putin then you have to deter by delivering, for instance, long-range missiles."

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