United States President Joe Biden reveals the real reason his government is not sending rockets to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia amid the nearly four-month-long war.
On Monday, the Democratic leader said the U.S. will not send rocket systems to the European nation that could potentially reach into Russia. The announcement came after reports that his administration was planning to send long-range systems to the besieged nation.
Rockets To Help Ukrainians
Several media outlets reported that the Biden administration was leaning toward sending advanced long-range systems to Ukraine. Reporters outside the White House asked the president if his administration would supply the latter with weapon systems that could strike Russia.
The situation comes amid reports of the Biden administration considering the distribution of the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). This would allow Ukrainian military forces to fire rockets much further than they are currently able.
The MLRS had reportedly been one of Ukrainian officials' top requests from the United States and they argued they needed it to stop the advance of the Russian military in the east. Moscow's forces have already taken control of the key city of Lyman last week, as per Fox News.
Biden's reluctance to send the weapon systems comes as the U.S. attempts to ease the tension with Moscow. While it was unclear what the president meant with his remarks, it was consistent with other briefings over the weekend that the White House was willing to provide the MLRS as long as it withheld the longest-range missiles.
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The US-made MLRS comes in many different variants, which in turn, can use a variety of munitions. The longest range can fire missiles up to 185 miles away while others use rockets that have shorter ranges of 20 to 40 miles.
According to The Guardian, one senior U.S. official said that MLRS was under consideration but noted that nothing was on the table with long-range strike capabilities. In a statement, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described Biden's remarks as "reasonable" and warned that if Russian cities were struck, Moscow's forces would "have struck at the centers of these criminal decisions."
Russia-Ukraine War
Ukraine appears close to losing the city of Severodonetsk, which is the easternmost city that it has controlled in the Donbas region. The situation comes amid a relentless Russian artillery barrage that has already destroyed a large portion of the region that had a population of roughly 100,000.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday acknowledged that "the entire critical infrastructure" and "more than two-thirds of the city's housing stock" had already been completely destroyed by Russian forces. He repeated his pleas to international governments for modern weapons to defend his count and his people.
The Biden administration is expected to announce a decision regarding the deployment of weapon systems to Ukraine this week. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said before the Memorial Day weekend that U.S. officials were still trying to determine what the next drawdown package will include in order to defend Ukraine against Russia's assault, Newsweek reported.
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