A lot happens in a day. Sunday morning's news bulletins led with reports of a barrage of 200 Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukraine's energy grid. The stories focused on how people across Ukraine faced blackouts as workers sought to repair the damage from the largest Russian attack for several months.
By evening, however, another story dominated the headlines. US media reported a decision from the White House to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. A day later and there is no official confirmation from the White House, which seems to be opting for a degree of strategic ambiguity as a way of unbalancing the response from the Kremlin, though I write on the assumption the reports are correct.
Ukraine has been lobbying for the US to lift restrictions on the use of long-range ATACMS missiles for months (I wrote about it here and here). According to US media reports, President Joe Biden's decision only allows Ukraine's armed forces to strike targets that will help to sustain its incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. Regardless, it's clear that a significant line has been crossed with the decision.
Comments from unnamed US sources have linked to change of policy to the involvement of North Korean troops on Russia's side. The timing of the decision does not fit that narrative all that well for me. The first reports of North Korean soldiers joining Russia's war effort came from Ukrainian intelligence in early October, subsequently corroborated by South Korea's main spy agency and the US defence department. These reports suggested that North Korean troops had already deployed to join Russia's attempt to repel Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, with an expectation that they would later enter Ukraine itself. Even Russia's ally, Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, denying the initial claims about North Korea's involvement, acknowledged that it would represent an escalation.
US sources are further quoted as stating that a Russia is about to launch a major counteroffensive with Korean troops in the Kursk region, which may well be true, but Russia has already mounted one or more counteroffensives striving to take back the territory. So it is reasonable to ask why Biden's administration would be more concerned this time round? Might the motivation be something more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers reported to be fighting alongside Russia?