So, we seem to be moving to a long-belated U.S. decision to lift the ban on the Ukrainian use of ATACMS missiles on targets deep in Russian territory. This is what is expected to be voiced today by Secretary Blinken, who has been confirmed to have arrived in Kyiv today along with his British colleague David Lammy. There's no need to trivialize this expected decision and say that "it won't change anything" and that "it's not a silver bullet" against Russia. No one in Kyiv seriously believes in wonder weapons because we're talking about multiple systemic decisions that make a real difference when combined. In early 2022, western-provided anti-tank weapons played an important role in devastating Russian columns in north Ukraine and thus, in combination with other means, particularly precipitated the Russian failure at Kyiv and, therefore, the entire failure of the so-called 'special military operation' aka 'taking Kyiv within three days.' We all remember what happened when a handful of Western-provided HIMARS and M270s (which also "wouldn't make a difference") entered the state, devastated Russian logistics and Russian ammo depots, and particularly precipitated the liberation of Kherson. We all know the difference that Western-provided air defense systems have played and how much history they continue writing in Ukrainian hands. With the use of ATACMS against targets in Russian territory, we have Russian air bases, we have Russian carriers of gliding bombs and their munition depots, we have Russian logistics, infrastructure, bombers, etc etc etc of what we need to incapacitate and greatly diminish Russia's very ability to fight this war on Ukraine. The problem is that such decisions come chronically at least a year late, greatly mitigating their effect on the strategic situation and repeatedly giving the Kremlin way too much time to unfold and bolster its own war machine. Let me guess what happened before the U.S. administration REPORTEDLY decided to lift yet another ban on the Ukrainian use of ATACMS—the Kremlin once again ignored the U.S. calls to de-escalate its war in Ukraine (where the potential Ukrainian use of ATACMS was used as leverage on Russia) and just regularly threatened "consequences," expecting the "escalation management party" to give the Kremlin some more time to bomb Ukraine into the stone age unpunished. The problem is that these tactics of reluctance and trying to motivate the Kremlin to come to reason step by step have never worked and are not working. There won't be a moment when the U.S. lifts yet another absurd limitation on the Ukrainian use of Western weapons, and the Kremlin is like, "Oh wow, okay, we better now wrap this up before it's too late." The Kremlin will "wrap this up" only when its entire war machine is stripped of its effective ability to fight this -- which means no more artificial "red lines", no more listening to Dmitriy Peskov's laughable threats, which means the end of illusional hope to get rid of Russia's war in an easy way by "giving Putin a way out," or by "saving Putin's face," or by "not spoiling relations with Putin" for the future "because we need Russia on our side against China."