President-elect Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor nominee criticized the Biden administration for easing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-donated Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. In a major policy shift, the Biden administration on Sunday said Ukraine is now allowed to use ATACMS, although limited to strikes inside Russia’s Kursk region. That move comes two months before Trump takes office.
TWZ readers can get up to speed with the news about Biden’s long-range weapons policy shift in our recent report here.
Mike Waltz, currently a Florida congressman, also told Fox News that he was not briefed before the policy change became public.
“It’s another step up the escalation ladder,” he said about allowing Ukraine to strike targets in Kursk with ATACMS. “And nobody knows where this is going.”
“North Korea is unleashing ballistic missiles, artillery, now tens of thousands of soldiers” into Ukraine, he continued. “The administration responds by lifting this restriction. North Korea sends more soldiers. South Korea is now saying it may get engaged. China is buying oil from Iran for pennies on the dollar. Iran is using that to send missiles and drones into Russia that is then hitting Ukrainian critical infrastructure.”
Up until now, the Biden administration has refused to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS inside Russia, fearing both antagonizing Moscow and running through U.S. stocks of those weapons ahead of a potential conflict in the Pacific.
The Biden administration move “is a tactical development,” Waltz posited. “President Trump is talking grand strategy here. How do we get both sides to the table to end this war? What’s the framework for a deal and who’s sitting at that table? Those are the things that President Trump, of course, will be working with.”
Trump has promised to quickly end the war, though no details have yet been provided. As we have previously reported, it remains to be seen just how the president-elect will deal with the situation. You can read more in our deep dive here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to respond, but the Kremlin’s spokesman said the move “adds fuel to the fire.”
“This is a qualitatively new round of tension and a qualitatively new situation in terms of U.S. involvement in this conflict,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in a Monday briefing. “It’s clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to, they’ve said so, to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further provoke the level of tension.”
Putin has previously threatened to “supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?”
Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin issued an ominous warning.
“On Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike deep into our country with U.S. missiles,” he wrote on Telegram. “If this happens, Russia will be forced to respond. How is a question for the Ministry of Defense. It is possible that new weapons systems will be used, which the Russian Federation has not used on Ukrainian territory.”
He did not specify what kind of weapon, though Russia’s nuclear arsenal is obviously the most concerning.
Regardless, Volodin said that while the ATACMS will “cause damage…it will not change the situation on the battlefield. I emphasize this. But it will only worsen the fate of Ukraine and its future. And it will finally destroy Russian-American relations.”
Russian media offered sentiments ranging from “Biden is moving the world closer to a catastrophe” to “This is not something out of the blue and invincible,” according to BBC‘s Russian editor Steve Rosenberg.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, welcomed Biden’s ATACMS decision. He has repeatedly urged member states, in particular Germany, a leading military donor, to lift these restrictions. However, his attempts to craft an EU-wide position have gone unheaded, leaving each country to act unilaterally.
“You know my position,” Borrell told reporters on Monday. “Ukraine should be able to use the arms we provide to them not only to stop the arrows but also to hit the archers. I continue believing this has to be done.”
A since-revised story in the French Le Figaro media outlet on Sunday claimed that both France and Britain signed off on the use of their long-range weapons in Russia. That claim no longer appears. On Monday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot neither confirmed nor denied whether Ukraine had been granted permission to use SCALP-EG air-launched cruise missiles for strikes deep into Russian territory.
Speaking to journalists ahead of a European Union ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday, Barrot referenced France’s previous stance on relaxing restrictions, according to Reuters.
“We openly said this was an option that we would consider if it was to allow to strike a target from where Russia is currently aggressing Ukrainian territory. So nothing new on the other side,” Barrot said.
The U.K. has yet to allow Ukraine to use its similar Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles inside Russia, the BBC reported.
Meanwhile, a former high-ranking Ukrainian official criticized the Biden administration for limiting the use of ATACMS to Russia’s Kursk region.
“I think the weakness of the Biden administration in facing up to Putin is the key reason why we are entering the third year of war,” tweeted Tymofiy Mylovanov, Ukraine’s former Minister of Economics. “Ukrainians could have stopped Putin in 2022 had Biden not hesitated to provide weapons and allow strikes he is only now authorizing.”
Donald Trump Jr. derided the outgoing Biden administration as “imbeciles” for easing restrictions on ATACMS just two months before his father takes office again.
“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” he tweeted. “Gotta lock in those $Trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!”
Allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS in Kursk is the latest in a series of iterative steps the Biden administration has taken when it comes to the use of long-range weapons on Russian soil.
Back in May, Biden allowed Ukraine to use M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, with a range of about 50 miles, against targets inside Russia bordering Kharkiv Oblast. It was in response to a Russian counteroffensive in that area.
Ukraine has also been using U.S.-donated Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) and Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) precision-guided bombs, as well as French-donated AASM-250 Hammer rocket-assisted bombs in Kursk.
As we noted yesterday, Biden’s ATACMS decision was a response to the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk to help Russia push Ukraine out of its three-month-old salient there. Holding on to Kursk is also critical, especially now, as it is seen as a key bargaining chip. With the new administration taking its own approach to the war, an attempt to negotiate a deal is now rapidly approaching on the horizon. Losing Kursk now would mean Ukraine’s haggling position would be significantly weaker.
One fear is that Putin will lash out regardless. The policy shift “runs the risk of triggering a sharp increase in retaliatory sabotage, such as cyber and arson attacks on Britain and its European NATO partners,” The Guardian argued.
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On the battlefield, Russian troops are continuing to advance near two key cities in eastern Ukraine, but are making little progress in taking back territory in its Kursk region.
In particular, Russian troops are pressing toward Kupiansk, a logistics hub along the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast as well as Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast.
However, as the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argues, Ukraine’s continued defense of Pokrovsk bodes well for the future.
“Russian forces have not taken Pokrovsk after eight months of grinding but consistent advances in western Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian defensive operations, based on the integration of successful Ukrainian drone innovators and operators with ground forces combined with constraints on Russia’s strategic and operational-level manpower and materiel reserves have forced the Russian military command to abandon its original campaign design of a frontal assault on Pokrovsk,” ISW suggested. “Ukraine’s ability to stave off the seizure of Pokrovsk thus far and force the Russian military to divert its efforts to advances in arguably the least operationally significant sector of the frontline is a positive indicator of Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting this war despite the challenges Ukraine faces and the setbacks it has suffered.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Pokrovsk on Monday. He spoke with troops there and awarded medals. Pokrovsk has been under intense pressure by Russian forces who have advanced to within about six miles east of that city.
Zelensky also visited Kupiansk, a city in Kharkiv Oblast that has come under increasing pressure from Russian forces.
Low-level Russian military commanders in Kursk misrepresented their progress there, resulting in increased losses, Euromaidan Press reported.
The commanders “lied about the success of the assaults on Malaya Lokhnya and the frontline changes, which led to catastrophic results for the next stage of their planned operation,” the news outlet claimed. “This false narrative led to a complete lack of situational awareness on the battlefield. In reality, the Russians did not control these settlements.”
Instead, “100 Russian soldiers from the broken units were actually encircled with no chance to break out,” Euromaidan Press continued. “In an attempt to secretly salvage the situation and align with the reports submitted to higher command, Russian commanders ordered repeated waves of assaults.”
The War Zone cannot independently verify these claims.
Russia continues to suffer heavy losses in its effort to dislodge Ukraine from the Kursk region. The following video showcases a compilation of Russian vehicles destroyed by mines there.
Last month was the deadliest of the war for Russia, according to the U.K’s Defense Intelligence directorate.
The average daily number of Russian troops killed and wounded was 1,354, it stated, citing Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff statistics. For the month, there were 41,900 casualties, eclipsing the previous record of 39,100 from May. November is off to an even bloodier start, with an average of 1,498 killed and wounded as of Nov. 12.
It’s worth noting that casualty numbers vary widely depending on the source and The War Zone cannot independently verify them.
A day after launching a massive strike against Ukraine’s power infrastructure, Russia attacked Odesa. The missile strike killed at least eight and wounded at least 18 according to local officials. Russia has been saving cruise missiles to carry out its winter campaign of destruction against Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure, as well as other targets.
The video below shows one of those missiles being shot down.
Intense volleys of anti-aircraft fire by Ukrainian air defense units was seen in a video of a Nov. 15 Russian attack on Odesa.
Video emerged on social media of Sunday’s massive attack across Ukraine. The one below shows the moment of impact of a missile on the Kremenchuk Hydroelectric Power Station.
Some of the Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles used in Sunday’s missile strike were equipped with Soviet R-95-300 engines instead of standard Russian TRDD-50A engines, the Ukrainian Colonel of the General Staff Telegram channel reported.
“This is the first recorded case of such a symbiosis of a modern cruise missile of the Russian Federation and an outdated Soviet engine,” Colonel of the General Staff claimed. “Given that the Russian Federation does not manufacture them, there is a possibility that they are taken from old Soviet stocks or the remnants of Kh-55, Kh-55SM cruise missiles are disassembled.”
The production of subsonic rocket engines in the Russian Federation “can be a kind of bottleneck (weak spot) in the entire chain of rocket production, and be a restraining factor in the continued increase in production volumes,” the Telegram channel postulated. “Previously, the R-95-300 engines, in addition to its native Kh-55(SM) cruise missile, were also seen in almost all discovered Kh-59 guided air missiles.”
The U.K. Defense Intelligence directorate said two Russian Gepard-class frigates, Tatarstan and Dagestan, were damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack on the port of Kaspiysk on November 6. The operation also reportedly damaged smaller Project 21631 vessels, the U.K. intelligence officials claimed. This was Ukraine’s first strike against Russia’s Caspian Flotilla. You can read more about that in our story about the initial attack here.
Ukraine’s defense minister said the country is ramping up its production of long-range strike weapons.
“Today, we are increasing the production of Ukrainian missiles,” Rustem Umerov said on Telegram. “The first 100 rockets of this year have already been produced. Serial production of R-360 ‘Neptun’ cruise missiles with improvements for hitting targets at longer distances has been successfully scaled up.”
In addition, “new drone missiles are also being developed, in particular, ‘Palyanytsia,’ which is an example of successful cooperation between the state and the private sector. We also work in this direction with foreign partners.”
Umerov noted that April 13, 2022, marked a turning point for Ukraine’s missile industry.
That’s when “the Neptune missile complex destroyed the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the cruiser Moskva. It became a historic moment and demonstrated the strength of our national missile armament.” You can read more about that in our reporting at the time here.
North Korea provided Russia with 50 170mm M1989 Koksan self-propelled howitzers and 20 240mm multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) capable of firing standard rockets and guided missiles, the Financial Times reported.
That confirms a story we reported last week about the appearance of Koksans in Russia.
Russian engineers are “manufacturing hundreds of decoy drones meant to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses as they try to protect against a horrific new weapon,” an Associated Press investigation has found.
The plant at Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone “recently started churning out thermobaric drones alongside the decoys,” the investigation found. Also known as a fuel-air explosive (FAE) weapon, it is in the same class as certain U.S. weapons, like the AGM-114N Hellfire missile, with a special ‘augmented’ warhead, or the BLU-118/B that was used against cave complexes in Afghanistan. Essentially, this type of weapon works in two stages, using a fuel mixture scattered as as an aerosol cloud and an ignition detonation a to ignite the cloud. It generates a high-temperature explosion that generates a much more powerful blast wave over a longer duration than a conventional condensed explosive. It can kill people in gruesome ways even if they are located inside buildings, caves, and bunkers.
“Russia came up with the plan for decoys in late 2022 and codenamed it Operation False Target,” a person familiar with Russia’s drone production told AP.
“The idea was to launch armed drones along with dozens of decoys, sometimes stuffed with rags or foam, and indistinguishable on radar from those carrying real bombs,” the wire service stated. “Ukrainian forces must make split-second decisions about how to expend scarce resources to save lives and preserve critical infrastructure.”
Last week, we noted that Russia is using its Gerbera drones as decoys in Shahed-136 attack waves to fool Ukrainian air defense and force it to expend interceptors.
The Gerbera drones contain at least nearly 30 foreign components according to the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR).
Research on Gerbera drones that have been shot down “proved that the Russians make them according to the Chinese prototype using foreign components imported from China,” GUR claimed on its Telegram channel.
The drone is made by the Chinese model aircraft manufacturer Skywalker Technology Co., Ltd., which also produces fuselages and organizes the delivery of kits to Russia,” GUR added. “Delivery is carried out through third-party companies.”
In addition, the barrage versions of the UAV are guided to targets by an operator similar to the way first-person view drones work, GUR stated. The Gerbera is equipped with “a Chinese camera with a three-axis suspension Topotek KHY10S90 and a Xingkai Tech Mesh Network XK-F358 modem.”
It’s powered by “a DLE60 engine – manufactured by the Chinese Mile Hao Xiang Technology Co, Ltd,” GUR added. “In the summer of 2024, this company came under US sanctions for supplies to Russia.”
According to GUR’s War Sanctions database of Russian weapons containing foreign components, there are 29 in the Gerbera drones.
Earlier this month, we reported that (GUR) claimed it found dozens of Western-made components in the Russian S-70 Okhotnik-B (Hunter-B) flying wing unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) downed last month in a case of friendly fire.
The presence of foreign components in Russian weapons has been established since the start of the war as commonplace, as we have previously reported.
The European Union is considering additional sanctions against China for providing Russia with Garipya attack drones.
“We have had reports from intelligence sources on the existence of a factory inside China producing drones which are shipped to Russia,” a senior EU official told Politico.
The official said that the EU has to determine whether Beijing knew about the firm’s activities and whether the production of drones amounted to “direct cooperation on military equipment between China and Russia.”
One option being examined is adding more Chinese companies to a list of third-country firms facing EU sanctions, a second EU diplomat told Politico.
Another damaged and abandoned U.S.-donated M1 Abrams main battle tank was reportedly recovered by Russian troops.
Out of 31 donated, Ukraine has previously seen at least eight destroyed, one damaged, seven damaged and abandoned and one captured, according to the Oryx open-source tracking group. Those figures could be higher because Oryx only tabulates losses for which it has visual confirmation.
In what may prove to be one of the most iconic images captured during Russia’s all-out war, there are claims that a Russian Lancet loitering munition is seen seconds before striking Ukrainian troops.
There are claims, however, that the image is faked, sparking a debate you can read about in the following thread.
Ukraine reportedly launched Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) munitions strike – fired by the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS or an M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) provided to Ukraine – against Russian positions. They then fired another volley at troops coming to evacuate them. You can see the strikes in the following drone video.
Germany’s Quantum Systems, whose Vector eVTOL UAV has been deployed by the hundreds in Ukraine, recently given a rare look inside its Ukrainian Service, Support, Training, and Logistics Center (SSTLC) and spare parts production.
What may be the first duel between net-throwing drones was captured on video. While both sides are using drones that fire nets to “capture” opposing drones, this may be the first time such weapons were used against each other.
The DoD is looking at a similar system for domestic drone defense.
A Russian Orthodox priest reportedly warned troops about the North Korean soldiers sent to help fight Ukraine.
“Our Korean comrades arrived from distant lands who don’t believe in God,” said the priest, according to a machine translation. They brought some kind of illness with them – God deniers with atheist sins.”
On Sunday, Ukrainian Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of GUR, told us that there were 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region as part of a massive effort to push Ukrainian troops out of the salient they established there three months ago.
And finally, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer may have provided Santa with night-vision capabilities, but the governor of Russia’s Magadan region claims pelts from those animals will help Russian soldiers hide from Ukrainian thermal imaging.
In addition to providing medical devices, equipment and sweets, Sergey Nosov promised to send “reindeer skins for disguise on the front lines,” the Russian Argumenti news outlet reported.
The properties of the skin and wool of the reindeer “allow you to hide from thermal imaging equipment and shelter, and also retain heat in the cold season,” Nosov said, according to the publication.
Whether reindeer skin can outright fool thermal imaging systems is unknown and a claim we cannot verify at this time, although a heavy hide should be able to mask some degree of thermal signature.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com