NYT: America is ready; The main target is known. "It's going to hurt"

NYT: America is ready; The main target is known. "It's going to hurt"

For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.

Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate.

Official Washington believes that such a scenario, the return of Crimea, would be crucial, and in the meantime, the fear of Russia's use of nuclear weapons has dimmed.

"But over the course of the conflict, the United States and its NATO allies have been steadily loosening the handcuffs they put on themselves, moving from providing Javelins and Stingers to advanced missile systems, Patriot air defense systems", NYT specifies.

American officials are discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target Putin’s hard-fought control over a land bridge that functions as a critical supply route connecting Crimea to Russia via the Russian-occupied cities of Melitopol and Mariupol.

With the Black Sea fleet, a major Russian air base, command posts and logistics hubs supporting Russian operations in southern Ukraine, the peninsula represents a major focus in Kyiv’s battle plans, and they need US arms in order to achieve that.

In deciding to give the Bradleys to Ukraine, the Biden administration moved closer to providing Kyiv with something for which senior Ukrainian officials have been imploring the United States for months: direct American help for Ukraine to go on the offense — including targeting Crimea, reports Jutarnji list by quoting New York Times.