Today, Tuesday, marks 1,000 days since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Speaking to "Ringvaade" on this somber occasion, Kannik conceded that on that February 24, 2022, one thousand days ago, few people would have believed that the war would last this long.

He said: "If we listen to the experts and Western politicians at that time, almost no one believed that Ukraine would be able to hold out to the extent it has. Even optimists like me did not think Ukraine would endure and resist so well for this long."

"If we leave out the first couple of weeks of the war, when Russia captured large swathes of southern Ukraine, since then Ukraine has actually managed to regain more territory than Russia has captured," Kannik continued.

"So I think that, no, 1,000 days ago no one thought that we would still be discussing this same war, 1,000 days later," the ICDS chief added.

Kannik said that despite its holding out, one of the reasons Ukraine has not been even more successful in the war is that the West has allowed itself to be intimidated by Russia's nuclear blackmail threats, while the West also has not provided Kyiv with enough essential weapons.

According to sources, U.S. President Joe Biden has now given Ukraine permission to use U.S. long-range weapons, primarily the HIMARS-launched MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), to conduct strikes on Russian territory. This pushes ahead Ukraine's striking range greatly – ATACMS has a range of around 300 kilometers compared with about 70 kilometers for the standard Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles HIMARS also launches, even if Ukraine confines its strikes to the Kursk oblast, a large chunk of which it captured in the summer, still retaining some of that territory at present.

On this development, Kannik said: "It appears that the permission has been granted. The justification, on their part, is that this is their response to Russia's escalation, which involves bringing North Korean soldiers to the front line. As to whether this pertains solely to strikes on Russia's Kursk oblast, where currently the North Koreans are mainly located, or whether it will be allowed elsewhere, I have received different information and cannot answer precisely at this moment."

According to Kannik, Ukraine had previously already had long-range missiles in stock, but their use was restricted to targeting Russian military assets on occupied Ukrainian territories.

It is also unclear how much of this weaponry Ukraine still has in its possession; Kannik estimates that the supply is likely insufficient.

Less happily still is the fact that the permission may have come too late. This is partly because Russia has moved valuable targets further back than ATACMS maximum range from anywhere inside Ukraine, while Russia also makes use of plane-launched glide bombs. Although these may sound high-tech, many of them are Soviet-era legacy bombs with fins attached, allowing them to glide long distances as the name suggests.

Kannik said that permission to use the longer-range missiles should have been granted to Ukraine two years ago, whereas now they will not bring a major change to the overall course of the war.

"If this permission had come around 700 days ago, sometime in the autumn two years ago, its effectiveness would have been much greater. As of now, Russia has moved its more valuable assets, such as air force aircraft, beyond the range of ATACMS, which is around 300 kilometers. At present, these missiles are mainly capable of disrupting Russian logistics and the transport of weaponry to the front line," he said.

While this would mirror attacks on Ukraine's transport hubs, such as Pokrovsk, which Russia has been conducting,

"these alone will not turn the tide of the entire war," Kannik went on.

"They will help Ukraine on one or two specific fronts, mainly to impede and weaken Russian attacks there. But on their own, they will not change the overall course of things." This is also a supply rather than capability issue. "The U.S. has not provided Ukraine with these missiles in such quantities. And as we see, there is still hesitation about whether they can be used along the entire front line," he concluded.

Another issue with ATACMS/long-range missile use permission is that it might encourage Russia to switch attacks to other parts of Ukraine's sovereign borders and territory, further away from these weapons' effective range.

The change in president due in the U.S. next January also cannot be ignored in the context of continued aid to Ukraine, nor can the need for escalation management regardless of who is in office. On the plus side, the development may encourage other allies to follow suit in respect of their own long-range weaponry, for instance, the U.K. and France in the case of the plane-launched Storm Shadow system, and Germany in the case of Taurus missiles.

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