The outgoing Biden regime probably seeks to do a few things. For one, escalating the war when the entire world knows peace is imminent makes the new administration’s job more difficult. The unelected white house staffers, likely seeking to cause as much damage as possible before leaving office, would approve of such escalations just as a way to stick it to those who are taking their jobs.
Though this level of pettiness seems to be a bit extreme even for the classic D.C. bureaucrat, for many of the personalities currently involved in the Ukrainian war, they may indeed do everything they can to take a scorched-earth stance, and try to stoke World War III just out of spite.
Another likely goal of the Biden regime is simply fraud. While the entire western world panics at the technical line for a nuclear war being crossed (at least according to Russia), one small detail may calm concerns…Ukraine might not actually have the munitions to conduct any long range attack with. Suddenly allowing Ukraine to use long-range munitions against Russia, when they don’t have any more long-range missiles, is a classing political move emblematic of the entire Pentagon intelligentsia. Ukraine gets to shuffle some more money around and pretend to have the capabilities to severely impact Russia, while Russia herself knows that Ukraine can’t do much even with these allegedly new permissions.
While many may put a lot of weight on Ukraine previously being told “no” when it comes to the use of long-range munitions to strike Russia, the sharp reality of this increasingly-desperate war is that Ukraine has shown anything but restraint. Any munition that the United States gives them, gets used immediately (for the most part), as would be expected of any nation in a similar situation. As such, assuming that Ukraine has some large stockpile of ATACMS missiles that they haven’t used yet might not be entirely accurate. Additionally, even considering the “long-range” nature of the specific missiles in question, “long-range” does not mean “unlimited range”. Geography matters, and it’s doubtful as to if the “long-range” missiles given to Ukraine could actually strike Moscow, for instance. Ukraine has already fielded many munitions (such as drones) that have already been used to target Moscow directly, albeit with a very small payload.
On the other hand, only a handful of missiles can cause a rapid escalation into a more kinetic war; one missile evading countermeasures and successfully striking a substantial target in Russia could draw a response that the world is not yet prepared for.
Russia is probably banking on what the whole world knows is happening…the west trying to funnel as much money as possible through Ukraine before an inauguration, and adopting a scorched earth policy to increase the hardships for the next wave of political leadership in the United States. Putin, though technically allowing himself to use nuclear weapons, probably won’t do so in this instance. He knows the war is largely over, and that an armistice (and the buffer zone he wanted) is only a couple of months away.
Despite their rhetoric, Russia is not likely to launch nuclear weapons based on Ukraine striking a few targets inside Russia with a handful of ATACMS missiles.
None of this is particularly comforting for the American taxpayer, however. If the cultural norm is changing to allow for an outgoing regime to try to start WWIII so that the incoming regime has to deal with it…this is a very dangerous game that highlights that the apolitical decorum within Washington (however minimal) that has maintained some level of stability over the years is largely gone.
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