Weeks before leaving office, President Biden is shedding his long-held fear of war escalation and removing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-made missiles. Aides to President-elect Trump say the surprising shift is undermining the incoming commander-in-chief’s agenda.  

The Ukrainian military on Tuesday fired six missiles at Russia’s Bryansk region, nearly 90 miles away from the countries’ border. The first use of the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System deep in Russia’s territory follows Mr. Biden’s authorization on Monday for Kyiv to use such missiles outside its borders.

Mr. Biden had previously long delayed Kyiv’s request for delivering the Lockheed Martin-made supersonic tactical ballistic missile, known as ATACMS. Even after delivering them late last year, Washington imposed strict limitations on using the missiles, banning attacks on Russian soil.  

“No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period,” a close Trump adviser on the campaign trail, Richard Grenell, wrote on X. “This is as if he is launching a whole new war. Everything has changed now — all previous calculations are null and void. And all for politics.”

Yet, Republican hawks have long criticized Mr. Biden’s reluctance to send to Ukraine arms that Kyiv requested. Many, including strong Trump supporters, have called on the administration to allow the Ukrainian military to use American-supplied weapons as Kyiv saw fit. 

Trump’s designated national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz, said recently that to end the war and get President Putin to the negotiation table, America must enforce oil sanctions on Russia. Also, he added, “We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well.”

Critics at Washington say that Mr. Biden’s delay in arming Ukraine and micromanaging its use of weapons have extended the war, prevented a Ukrainian victory, and failed to pressure Russia to the negotiation stable. The Kremlin, meanwhile, is now seizing on what seems to be the outgoing president’s final act on Ukraine.   

President Putin reacted on Monday by lowering the threshold on the use of Russia’s nuclear weapons. “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression using conventional weapons against it and/or the Republic of Belarus,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Perskov, said Tuesday. 

Russia watchers at Washington dismiss the possibility that Moscow would in fact use nuclear weapons. “Even Putin isn’t that crazy,” Senator Blumenthal said Tuesday. America has “no indication” that Russia has changed its nuclear stance, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said. Yet, the rhetoric from Moscow is increasingly dire. Mr. Biden’s decision will “throw oil on the fire and escalate the conflict in Ukraine,” Mr. Peskov warned Monday. 

“The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly in the Bryansk region overnight is, of course, a signal that they want escalation,” Moscow’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters at Rio de Janeiro. “Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles.”

In reality, Mr. Biden’s decision was triggered by growing Russian aggression. As winter sets in, 120 Russian missiles and 90 drones struck Ukraine Sunday in one of the largest attacks on the country in months. “The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine,” President Zelensky said. “Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris.” 

The uptick in fighting is well-noted at Mar-a-Lago, where members of the Trump team blame Mr. Biden for undermining a repeated campaign boast by the incoming  president, that he would end the Ukraine war on day one of his administration. 

“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” the president-elect’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., writes on social media. 

Yet, Mr. Biden’s move with just two months left in his presidency has long been urged by Republicans. They have criticized his administration’s delays in arming Ukraine and restrictions on use of weapons. 

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Biden repeatedly cited concerns regarding further escalation to deny arms that Ukraine has requested. In many cases, he later ended up supplying to Kyiv weapons systems he had denied, like Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter planes.

After arguing that America has no ATASCMS to spare, Washington finally agreed late in 2023 to deliver to Ukraine some of the missiles, long sought by Mr. Zelensky. Last September, Senators Cotton, Wicker, Collins, and Graham, all Republicans, argued in a letter to Mr. Biden that delay in sending the missiles to Ukraine would only prolong the war.

“Providing ATACMS would enable Ukraine to strike key Russian logistics and communications targets as well as cruise missile and drone launch sites within Russian-occupied Ukraine,” the senators wrote. “ATACMS could also augment Ukraine’s ability to destroy Russian defensive formations.”

As in previous cases, Mr. Biden then relented. The question, though, is whether he acted too late to achieve the desired results. That question has become even more pertinent in the twilight of his presidency.