Shielding Russian Military Assets Cannot Serve Western Interests

From both legal and military perspectives, not allowing Kyiv to deploy Western-supplied long-range weapons against Russian targets is absurd. The political case, however, is more complex.

International Humanitarian Law defines objects which may be considered legitimate military targets, or in crude terms, objects which can be attacked legally.* Since it was Russia that decided to wage war on Ukraine, there can be no doubt that the state under attack has the right to strike at targets located on the aggressor’s territory. By the same token, no one seriously doubts that the airfields from which Russian bombers and drones take off on their lethal missions constitute legitimate targets for the Ukrainian military.

From both legal and military perspectives, therefore, it is absurd that the U.S. and British governments have so far not consented to Kyiv deploying the long-range weapons they have supplied it against targets deep inside Russian territory. In so doing, the United States and United Kingdom are effectively extending a form of protective shield over Russian air bases, even while bombs and missiles rain down on Ukrainian towns and cities.

Of course, the Americans and the British are aware of the inherent contradiction in fulfilling Ukraine’s military-defense needs, without authorizing operational deployment. The reason this dilemma has not been resolved to date lies in a third, political factor — it is the same reason Germany has not released any of its long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv — namely, the fear that the war could spread beyond Ukraine’s borders and even escalate from a conventional conflict into a nuclear one, in the event Western-supplied cruise missiles were suddenly launched against the Russian nuclear power’s military bases.

A Dangerous Dilemma

Is this fear well founded? The catch is that it might be too late by the time you find out the answer. On the one hand, Russia, for all its warnings of escalation, has thus far accepted every quantitative and qualitative increase in Western-donated military aid. Ukraine is already using jets, tanks, ordnance and grenades in combat, all of which are supplied by NATO countries.

Having said that, the absence of an escalation to date offers no assurance one will not occur in the future. Western politicians are not acting out of folly or cowardice but rather out of duty when they carefully weigh how to prevent the war in Ukraine from developing into World War III.

This does not mean the various legal, military and political considerations cannot be squared. Russia’s criminal conduct of the war in Ukraine makes its military installations far beyond the front line legitimate targets. The ban on firing Western-supplied missiles at these targets should be lifted, on the strict condition that Ukraine limits its deployment to unarguably legitimate military targets. Continuing to shield Russia’s military assets cannot serve Western interests.

*Translator’s Note: According to the International Humanitarian Law Databases of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial or total destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”