Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Donald Trump has not expanded on his thoughts about the Ukraine war since winning the election. (Reuters: Callaghan O'Hare)
Ukraine fires US-supplied missiles into Russia's Berdyansk region
A bargaining chip for Ukraine
The reason Ukrainian targeted Kursk is so that it has at least one major bargaining chip when it is forced by Donald Trump to sit at a negotiating table.
But then Russia responded – by arranging for as many as 10,000 soldiers from North Korea to fly to Russia and join with its forces to try to re-take Kursk.
The North Korean move, in turn, appears to have triggered the Biden administration to act.
For most of this war – the 1,000 days until this week – NATO has been supplying weapons to Ukraine on the condition that it use them only to attack Russian occupying forces, but not Russia itself.
So, Ukraine has been fighting a defensive war, attacking areas of Ukraine taken by Russia, including Crimea. Effectively, Ukraine had one hand tied behind its back.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin are jockeying for position before Trump takes over the White House. (Reuters)
It has been an asymmetric war – Russia has been able to fire at any target in Ukraine that it so chooses, while Ukraine has been constrained.
But as President Joe Biden prepares to leave the Oval Office, Washington has let the dog off the leash. Ukraine has been given the nod by the US to use the US-made Army Tactical Missile System – ATACMS – against targets in Russia. But the supply of these missiles will be limited.
The immediate trigger for this green light appears to be the amassing of North Korean soldiers for a counterattack in Kursk. The US is alarmed by the arrival of foreign troops and does not want this to become a precedent for forces from Iran and other enemies of NATO.
Within 24 hours of the lifting of its restriction on attacking Russia, Ukraine fired six ATACMS into the Bryansk region – Russia says it intercepted five and one landed with limited damage.
Russia's changed 'nuclear doctrine'
Another consequence has been that President Vladimir Putin approved changes to Russia's "nuclear doctrine", which is Moscow's guidance as to when it considers it legitimate to use its nuclear arsenal.
The newly-written doctrine says that "an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear state, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia".
Under these changes, an attack on Russia by ATACMS would meet the criteria. Russia has made clear it would regard any such attack as an attack by NATO and the US.
While Putin has threatened the nuclear option several times – and it's difficult to read the mind of the Russian leader – he is unlikely to push ahead with a nuclear attack.
The response from the US and the rest of NATO would likely be fierce.
Putin would know that should he go ahead with his threat, it is likely that scores of sites around Russia would be hit, including his beloved dacha in the Russian countryside.
The reason Moscow is alarmed by Ukraine using ATACMS is that they are long-range, lethal and difficult to pre-empt.
They are surface-to-surface missiles which can be launched by mobile units. This means that the Ukrainian army can move scores of mobile units near the frontline and Russia's satellite and drone surveillance will find it difficult to detect which mobile vehicles have ATACMS, and which have either less deadly or no missiles.
Americans say that ATACMS can "shoot and scoot".
Firing a lethal ballistic missile and then "scooting" gives the Ukrainians a strategic advantage. It also means that Ukraine can hit airfields or weapons supplies 300km from the frontline. It effectively pushes back Russian supply lines, making it more difficult to supply their soldiers on the frontline.
Until now, Ukraine has had a limited supply from the UK of Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The condition of the supply of these was that Ukraine could only use them to attack Russian forces – including in Crimea – but they had an additional limitation: they are launched by jets, which means that the Russian forces have an opportunity to shoot down the jets before the missiles are launched.
The stealth of the ATACMS makes this war more difficult for the Russians.
Soon after the ATACMS were fired this week, two underwater internet cables in the Baltic sea were cut – creating havoc in the communications of Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Germany.
At this stage there is no proof of who cut the cables, but Reuters reported that European governments accused Russia of escalating "hybrid attacks" on Ukraine's allies.
Reuters reported that the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Britain said in a statement: "Moscow's escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creasing significant security risks."
Jockeying for position
This is where the Trump factor comes in. It seems that both Russia and Ukraine are fiercely manoeuvring to be in the strongest possible position should Trump do what he has promised to do and bring together Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a ceasefire summit.
Since winning the election, Trump has not expanded on his thoughts about the Ukraine war. But an insight into his possible thinking has come from a former adviser who knows Trump well, Bryan Lanza.
Lanza was a political adviser to Trump for his 2016 and 2024 campaigns. He told the BBC recently that the incoming Trump administration should focus on peace rather than enabling Ukraine to gain back territory occupied by Russia.
"When Zelenskyy says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace once Crimea is returned, we've got news for President Zelenskyy: Crimea is gone," Lanza told the BBC.
"And if that is your priority of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you're on your own."
Zelenskyy has never seriously suggested having American troops in Crimea, but he has frequently raised the hope that Ukraine can wrest back Crimea from Russia, which took it by force in 2014.
There's a real sense that the Ukraine war is coming to an end. Nobody can be completely sure what that end will be.
But the hatreds that so many Ukrainians and Russians feel towards each other after this horrible war mean that the final phase of this war – if this is the final phase – will most likely be dangerous and unpredictable.
The man now in the best position to solve this war is Trump – himself not the most predictable leader.
His next four years in the White House are set to be unpredictable, possibly wild.
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