Biden & Putin Go Eyeball to Eyeball

Ahead of last Friday’s meeting in Washington between U.S. President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that should the United States and Britain authorize Ukraine to use long-range weapons to strike targets deeper inside Russia, “It will mean that NATO countries—the United States and European countries—are at war with Russia.”

Starmer and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy traveled to Washington to seek agreement on allowing Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), a supersonic tactical ballistic missile, and UK-supplied Storm Shadows, an air-launched long range cruise missile. If the Brits were expecting to get the greenlight from the American President, they left disappointed.

Despite bipartisan calls for the President to allow the use of long-range strike capabilities by Ukraine, when President Biden went eyeball-to-eyeball with his Russian counterpart, it was the U.S. President who blinked first.

The Kyiv Post described it this way on Saturday: “The two [Western] leaders have delayed an expected decision to let Ukraine fire Western-supplied long-range missiles into Russia, appearing to back down from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest threats of a direct war with NATO.”

Make no mistake, Prime Minister Starmer travelled to Washington with hat in hand in hopes of getting the nod from the President so the two Allies would be in lock-step. The decision was fully up to Biden to approve, and he failed to do so. The U.S. President has dragged his feet on every major decision on arming, equipping, and authorizing Ukraine to prosecute the kind of warfare it needs to in order to stop Russia. No war was ever won by playing defense, yet that is the default position that the Biden administration has repeatedly insisted upon.

Prime Minister Starmer did his best to put a positive spin on the meeting, saying that it “wasn’t a meeting about a particular capability” and adding that he and the American President would take up the conversation “with a wider group of individuals” later this month at the United Nations General Assembly.

For the Kremlin’s part, former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday crowed that “… the pompous Anglo-Saxon imbeciles do not want to admit one thing: any patience comes to an end.” While he said Russia has “formal” grounds to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine following the latter’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Medvedev instead threatened to use “newer technology” to turn the Ukrainian capital into “a giant melted spot” if the use of Western long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia is authorized.

No one wants to see NATO at war with Russia, but half-measures won’t defeat a bully like Vladimir Putin. The only thing a bully understands is power, and the West shouldn’t hamper Ukraine’s ability to project power and go on the offensive with long-range weapons.

Captain Scott Rye, USN (Ret.), is a former correspondent for Daily Shipping Guide, the former long-time editor of Alabama Seaport magazine, and the author of Of Men & Ships: The Best Sea Tales and Men & Ships of the Civil War.