Ukraine has been given permission to use long-range missiles provided by the United States and Britain to strike inside Russian territory, despite concerns that their use would escalate the conflict. But after initially launching some, Ukraine began to slow down its use. Kiev’s stocks are running out, writes the New York Times.

Time may also be running out: President-elect Donald Trump has publicly said it was a mistake to allow Ukraine to strike US-made long-range missiles inside Russia.

So far, the missiles have been effective in limited ways but have not changed the course of the war, senior NATO officials said.

The war also has not escalated as some feared. Although Russia fired a powerful new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian weapons facility after the first two long-range Western missile launches, it has since responded to them with the usual weapons of drones, missiles and threats.

Two US officials said they believed Russia was trying to avoid escalating military operations in Ukraine, especially with Trump’s election and given its recent successes on the battlefield.

Adm. Rob Bauer, NATO’s top military officer, said recently that the ATACMS strikes had “severely damaged a number” of weapons factories and ammunition depots in Russia. He said this forced Russia to move many logistics facilities further back from the front.

What happened to ATACMS is what has happened to Western weapons since the beginning of the war. Ukraine has been pushing for months or even years to acquire Western weapons: HIMARS, Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.

But by the time the West supplied Kiev with these weapons, Ukraine had lost more ground in the field. And no weapon could reverse the course. Western officials also say Ukraine has relied too much on aid from the West and not done enough to boost its own war effort, especially troop mobilization.

The United States had long resisted sending long-range ATACMS to Ukraine, fearing that use would escalate the war.

In the spring, President Biden backed down. The administration has sent up to 500 missiles from the Pentagon’s stockpile to Ukraine, US officials said. While Ukraine could not use them in Russia, it fired them into Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, targeting command and control points, weapons storage facilities and some other warehouses.

U.S. and NATO officials said that while those strikes were effective, they believe Ukraine could have been more judicious in the number of missiles used and more selective in targeting.

US officials said Biden had justified the Nov. 17 authorization to use the missiles inside Russian territory because Moscow had brought North Korean soldiers into the war.

According to the same sources, the weapons were originally intended to be used mainly against Russian and North Korean troops in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukraine has been trying to hold territory after a surprise attack in August.

At that point, however, Ukraine only had “dozens of missiles,” about 50, and no chance of acquiring more. Limited American reserves were already allocated for deployment in the Middle East and Asia. Officials in Britain, which allowed Ukraine to use its long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia after Biden’s decision, also said the British government did not have to provide more.

Trump is unlikely to fill the gap. He recently told Time magazine that he disagreed “very strongly” with Ukraine’s use of ATACMS on Russian soil and called Biden’s decision “stupid.”

Since the United States and Britain gave their approval, Ukraine has fired at least 31 ATACMS and 14 Storm Shadows, according to the Russian Defense Ministry and Russian military bloggers.

On November 21, Russia launched its new hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oresnik, at a military installation in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The attack was seen as a warning that Russia could hit any part of Europe with the new missile.

Six days later, the Russian general who was the architect of the invasion of Ukraine called Biden’s top military adviser to discuss the escalation.

After that November 27 call, Ukraine did not use ATACMS or Storm Shadows missiles for two weeks. Russia has also launched few missile or drone strikes in Ukraine, although Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to launch Oresnik into central Kiev if Ukraine does not stop using ATACMS against Russia.

Despite his public threats, Putin is trying to react cautiously to Ukraine’s operations, US officials said. They believe Moscow will likely not respond to ATACMS strikes in a way that could risk drawing Washington into the conflict or embarrass the new administration.

While Moscow could step up cyber operations or sabotage in Europe, it is unlikely to directly target U.S. interests, the officials said.

Some analysts said Ukraine had slowed its use of the missiles because it had initially targeted Russian facilities it had long wanted to hit. Now, with few missiles left, Ukraine is more cautious.

On December 11, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukraine had attacked a military airfield in the southern Russian city of Taganrog, a port on the Sea of ​​Azov, with six ATACMS, and threatened retaliation against Ukraine.

The United States then issued a rare warning: that Russia may be preparing to release an Oresnik. Instead, Russia retaliated with a large-scale airstrike, launching 93 missiles and nearly 200 drones into Ukraine’s energy sector.

On December 18, Ukraine fired six of the missiles and four Storm Shadows at one of the country’s largest chemical industry facilities in Russia’s Rostov region, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Two days later, Russia launched a barrage of missiles at Kyiv. Russian officials claimed it was in retaliation for attacks with Western weapons.