Ukraine war faces a major turning point

Risk of escalation rising as decision looms on whether the US will lift restrictions on use of long-range missiles by Ukraine against Russia.

- Jonathan Eyal

"I don't think that much about Vladimir Putin," a visibly angry US President Joe Biden snapped back recently when asked by a journalist whether the White House is frightened of the Russian leader and apprehensive about the danger of a broader military confrontation between America and Russia.

But the reality remains that by the end of September - when world leaders convene in New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly - Mr Biden will be compelled to make a critical strategic choice: whether to allow Ukraine to use American-supplied weapons to hit deep inside Russia, or whether to continue the current US ban, which restricts the use of such armaments solely to the defence of Ukrainian territory from Russian invaders.

Regardless of the decision Mr Biden ultimately takes, the war in Ukraine, which has already lasted almost 2 years and has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, is facing an inflexion point. Both Russia and the West seem destined to raise the stakes in their confrontation.

Mr Putin will remain very much in the US President's mind in the days to come.

When the history of the Ukraine war is eventually written, Mr Biden will be remembered as the man who - in one of the modern world's supreme ironies both mobilised the West in Ukraine's defence and then ended up as one of the critical obstacles to Ukraine's successful pursuit of the war.

The chief explanation for this strange outcome is that the US intelligence community was admirably accurate in predicting Russia's military plans. Yet, America's spooks were wildly inaccurate in analysing their long-term consequences.