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Ukraine's use of ATACMS and comparable weapons in Crimea or the Donbas suggests that strikes using these conventional weapons have been “priced in” to the Russian war effort, according to Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based think tank.

The implications of Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House on Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine are being minutely dissected. Will he deliver on his boast that he can end the war within 24 hours? How will he do that — if he can? At what cost to the long-suffering citizens of Ukraine? And how should Ukraine’s European allies anticipate and respond to whatever the new president — with all his unpredictability — chooses to do?

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said: “Many of the best targets – helicopters and glide-bomb armed aircraft attacking Ukrainian cities and troops in the north or in Kursk – have largely moved to air bases outside the range of ATACMS. This still leaves plenty of opportunities to strike military headquarters and ammunition or supply locations supporting Russian and North Korean troops, but this would be a reduced impact from when the Ukrainians first requested these weapons... The impact may be more political, albeit with a narrowing window of opportunity... The Ukrainians need to convince the incoming US administration that they are still worth backing – in President Trump’s transactional view, a ‘good investment’. And they will want to convince him to link his and US credibility to a ‘winning’ outcome, not a major compromise that sees the US ‘lose’.”