A new US military aid package helped Ukraine to avert what could have been a disaster: the occupation of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, according to CNN.
In addition, a recent decision to lift a ban on the use of weapons from the US and other allies to strike inside Russia has had a huge impact, say Ukrainian soldiers who fight on the front lines.
“We have destroyed targets inside Russia, which allowed for several successful counteroffensives. The Russian military can no longer feel impunity and security,” claimed the senior officer in Ukraine’s Security Service.
On 10 May 2024, Russia launched an offensive on Kharkiv Oblast, attempting to exploit Ukraine’s weapons shortages and restrictions on strikes on targets inside its territory.
This attack has led to a large number of civilian casualties, half of which have been documented in Kharkiv city.
“If the decision (to provide aid) wasn’t made, if we lost American support and military assistance, that would have been a game changer,” said International security expert Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian defense official and the co-director of foreign relations and international security programs at the Razumkov Center in Kyiv.
A regiment command post in Belgorod region, an ammunition depot in Voronezh, a drone facility and an airfield in Krasnodar, communication centers in Bryansk, and several naval sites in occupied Crimea are among the targets that were hit in Russia’s territory.
These strikes halted Russian attacks with S-300 and S-400 missile systems at Kharkiv Oblast, explained Konrad Muzyka, an independent defense analyst and the director of Rochan Consulting.
“Ukraine started conducting HIMARS strikes on targets in the Belgorod region and forced the Russians to push their S-300 system with which they were striking Kharkiv much further away, so now Kharkiv is beyond their range of Russian S-300 systems,” he said.
However, now Ukraine is facing another threat from aerial glide bombs dropped by fighter jets from a distance of some 60-70 kilometers – out of range of Ukraine’s air defenses.
Ukraine also needs to achieve air superiority over Russia. The long-awaited F-16 aircraft designed in the 1980s and 1990s are worse than the most modern Russian combat aircraft. The country still may use them to push away Moscow jets delivering bombs.
Moreover, the strategy for winning the war remains unclear. According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine anticipates the complete lifting of bans on the use of Western weapons by allies. Also, if former US President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, the country could face pressure to stop fighting for its territories occupied by Russia and abandon aspirations to join NATO, which would protect Ukraine from total occupation and destruction.
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