Ukraine’s stunning military offensive across the border in Kursk has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of a war that looked to be shifting heavily in Russia’s favor. But now, Kyiv’s momentum in the coming days and weeks may largely depend on the next U.S. move.

War analysts say that the Ukraine-Russia war has reached another pivotal moment, one in which the Biden administration has significant power over the trajectory of the conflict. George Barros, a top analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, tells Threat Status that the Kursk incursion has suddenly added vulnerability to Russian refueling stations, ammunition depots, vehicle repair centers and even the joint military-Federal Security Services headquarters overseeing the Kremlin’s internal response to the Kursk campaign.

Those facilities could be hit with American-made weapons if Kyiv is approved to use them, underscoring Washington’s direct, immediate role in determining the future of the war.

The Ukrainian president is arguing for just such a move by Washington, saying his country should have no restrictions on how it uses Western-made weapons. He also reportedly will present to Mr. Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former President Donald Trump a plan to end the war.

The shifting dynamics on the battlefield seem to have disoriented Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military commanders. Russian forces launched another missile barrage Wednesday, targeting the city of Kryvyi Rih with the latest in a string of attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

One more quick note on Russia: Mr. Putin has apparently promoted his cousin, Anna Tsivileva, who has no military background, to a key position in the Ministry of Defense.

The U.S. military for the first time in decades has no aircraft carrier strike groups in the Indo-Pacific region, despite mounting tensions with China over disputed South China Sea islands, the Taiwan Strait, and a recent Chinese air incursion near Japan. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz has all the details on the troubling situation there, after the Pentagon recently ordered several carrier strike groups out of the region and to the Middle East. Other Pacific-based carriers remain docked on the West Coast.

All of that means that the U.S. is without a carrier in the region for the first time since 2001.

Defense officials insist that the U.S. still has all the assets it needs nearby, or can get them to the region quickly. And it’s worth noting that the Pentagon did send a Navy destroyer through the increasingly militarized Taiwan Strait last week, the fourth such freedom-of-navigation operation this year challenging Beijing’s sovereignty claims.

That operation was part of a broader effort to push back against Chinese maritime claims in the region and what the U.S. and its allies cast as a pattern of increasingly aggressive behavior by Beijing. Two key American partners escalated those complaints on Tuesday.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon is tracking the key developments in the Pacific, as officials in the Philippines called China the “biggest disrupter of peace” in the region, while Japan lambasted Beijing as “a threat to our safety.” The protests reflect strong concerns in the region about Chinese aggressive territorial claims in and over the South China and East China seas. And in some ways, those concerns have proven a boon for the Biden administration as it seeks to build a united front of allies against China in the Western Pacific.

New details emerged late Tuesday about the Pentagon’s ill-fated temporary aid delivery pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip. A detailed report from the U.S. Agency for International Development Inspector General says that Mr. Biden ordered the construction of the pier despite warnings by U.S. aid officials that it would be difficult to pull off and would undercut efforts to open land crossings, which were seen as a better alternative.

The report offers more evidence that the $230 million project, while well-intentioned, may have been doomed from the start. The Defense Department formally abandoned the pier in July after months of near-constant setbacks, including bad weather and maintenance challenges, that greatly limited the actual delivery of food and medicine to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

High-profile political candidates and their top campaign advisers aren’t the only ones who need to brace for foreign nations’ hackers breaching their defenses. Family and friends of the candidates are at risk as well.

Washington Times reporter Ryan Lovelace has been all over this story and has the latest details on a warning from Sunny Consolvo, who heads Google’s Security and Privacy User Experience team, about the threats to family and even close friends of candidates.

“Vendors, in fact, often even the family or close friends of the candidate and possibly senior staff, are … targeted by several of these attackers we talked about,” Ms. Consolvo said on a webinar sponsored by Defending Digital Campaigns.

The threat posed to the U.S. electoral system from foreign hackers is reaching unprecedented heights this year. Last week, Mr. Lovelace offered a deep dive into the Iran-backed hacker groups allegedly targeting campaigns of both political parties.

The world has been holding its breath for weeks in anticipation of a possible Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel after a top Hamas official was assassinated in the heart of Tehran. But why has Tehran mostly held its fire so far? Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist at The Times, looks to answer that question.

He writes that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “understands the importance of strategic patience,” viewing his 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. as a long-term “pathway into the nuclear weapons club, along with tens of billions of dollars” in new economic activity after American sanctions were lifted.

The Iranian leader, Mr. May argues, is playing the long game against Israel and is mostly content to rely on proxy groups outside Iran.

“He has been waging a war of attrition, death by a thousand cuts, most of those cuts made by Arabs whom he is only too happy to martyr in pursuit of his imperial ambitions,” Mr. May writes.

• Sept. 3-6 — Billington CyberSecurity Summit

• Sept. 9-10 — The Promise and Perils of AI: Issues at Stake in the 2024 Election, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 4 — The American Dream Lecture Series: Walter Russell Mead on American Foreign Policy in the Next Presidency, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 9 — The Role of China in Africa’s Just Energy Transition, Wilson Center

• Sept. 9 — Voices for Peace and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine, Stimson Center