U.S. Officials Are ‘Very Concerned’ After Escalation in the War in Ukraine

But senators are broadly supportive of a recent change in Biden policy to allow Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, for strikes from Ukraine into Russian territory.

Tim Kaine

Bonnie Cash/AP

Officials in Washington are worried after Russia launched what the Department of Defense called “an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile,” an escalation in the war in Ukraine, this week.

Though it was a nonnuclear strike, the missile alarmed the U.S. and its allies because of its capacity to deliver a nuclear attack. Concerns of drastic escalation in the conflict — considered alarmist by some officials at the start of the week — became very real, very quickly.

“I’m very concerned,” Sen. Tim Kaine told NOTUS. “Much of what I know about it, I know via a classified setting,” he said. “But I’m very concerned. Our allies are concerned.”