Russian anti-government rebel calls Biden’s missile decision ‘symbolic’ with no impact

US President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use American-made long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russian territory is a mostly “symbolic” decision unlikely to have any major military impact on the outcome of the war, a former member of the Russian parliament told Al Arabiya News on Monday.

“Frankly speaking, I really think it doesn’t matter at the moment because it was discussed throughout the whole 2024 and throughout this year Ukrainians have already developed long-range drone capacity which is way longer strikes than what we are talking about right now…at the end of the day, this decision has more symbolic meaning than the actual game changer on the field of battle,” Ilya Ponomarev said during an interview with Nadira Tudor on W News.

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As for the motive behind the decision, he described it as a political move by the outgoing President Biden who will leave office in January and wants to leave an impression for his successor President-elect Donald Trump.

“I think that Mr. Biden is concerned about his legacy because so many times accused of indecisiveness and passiveness and being in response to the challenges on the frontlines…right now he wants to leave something behind him so that the new administration has to build on something,” Ponomarev said.

The missiles in question are ATACMS. They can hit targets up to 300 km away which leaves Moscow out of their range.

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine which has been supported militarily by the West.

Although being the major supplier of aid and weapons to Ukraine, the US has been wary to authorize the use of long-range weapons against targets inside Russia fearing escalation as threatened by Moscow in the event of such a move.

Ponomarev rebuked worries of such an escalation saying that Russia would not react.

“…what could be more than Ukraine entering the territory of Russia, the Kursk region?...No escalation happened. Russia did not react in any special way to it besides just some empty threats which originally were that ‘we will return the region to our control within a week’, then it was in a month and now Putin said ‘Ok, we will try to return it by the time Trump gets into the office.’”

The former MP continued, “They are pushing and pushing more deadlines because they are unable to escalate. They understand that the nuclear option is no option because it’s suicidal for the current inhabitants of the Kremlin. But they have nothing else.”

Target the elites

Although he welcomed the move, Ponomarev stressed that the missiles would mostly be used to strike North Korean troops fighting alongside their Russian allies and in order to really make a difference in the war, Russia’s elites and supporters of Putin would have to be struck to make them feel an impact and create division among their ranks.

“(…) if we want to make a game changer in this war, we obviously need to attack the houses of the rich, the houses of members of Putin’s elites to generate split within the enemy’s ranks because right now, no one in Moscow can see this war as something that threatens them personally.”

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