Ukrainian parliamentary officials are pushing the Biden administration to remove restrictions on Kyiv striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons, Politico reported.
In an interview published Tuesday, the outlet quoted two parliamentarians, David Arakhamia and Oleksandra Ustinova, who were visiting Washington to gather support for the request.
Ustinova, head of Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission on arms and munitions and leader of the Holos opposition party, spoke repeatedly on the struggles Kyiv has faced because of the strike ban.
“We saw their military sitting one or two kilometers from the border inside Russia, and there was nothing we could do about that,” Ustinova told Politico.
Russia launched an offensive in the northeastern region of Kharkiv over the weekend, capturing several settlements and targeting bridges in the area. The renewed incursions come more than a year after Ukraine retook the region in mid-2022.
Ukraine knew for weeks that Russia was massing troops at the border, with intelligence officials saying in early May that Moscow was gathering some 50,000 to 70,000 personnel there.
But the Russian advance has rankled some Ukrainians, who questioned why the area seemed lightly defended after videos emerged of Moscow’s troops crossing over unopposed. Ukrainian media reported that the top general responsible for the region’s defense was sacked on Tuesday.
Speaking to Politico, Ustinova said the Russians had become “smart now because they know there is a restriction for Ukrainians to shoot at the Russian territory.”
“And we saw all of their military equipment sitting one or two kilometers from the border and there was nothing we could do,” she said.
Some observers say Moscow’s goal on the northern front may be to establish a “buffer zone” that prevents Ukrainian forces from attacking the Russian border instead of pushing toward Kharkiv city.
It also gives the Kremlin space to wheel in artillery that can get in range of Kharkiv city. Ustinova told Politico that Russia aimed to make Kharkiv a repeat of the battle of Mariupol, where fighting was so intense that much of the eastern city was effectively leveled.
“You’re giving us a stick, but you will not let us use it,” she said.
Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War concurred in a Sunday assessment that Russia was able to advance in Kharkiv due to the strike ban for NATO weapons.
“Russian offensive efforts to seize Vovchansk are in large part a consequence of the tacit Western policy that Ukrainian forces cannot use Western-provided systems to strike legitimate military targets within Russia,” it wrote.
Ukraine has been attacking targets beyond the border — more recently on Russia’s oil facilities — but only with its own drones.
Washington and its allies fear that allowing Ukraine to attack Russian soil with Western equipment would cross a red line with Moscow.
While it’s not immediately clear if this would lead to all-out war, other methods for the Kremlin to strike back include organizing terror attacks with radical groups embedded in the West.
To that end, some weapons systems, like the US-supplied HIMARS launchers given to Ukraine, were tweaked before delivery to prevent them from firing into Russia.
The policy has been criticized as a means of effectively shielding Russia from significant Ukrainian counterattack. Still, two anonymous US officials told Politico that the Biden administration isn’t changing the rules.
“The assistance is for the defense and not for offensive operations in Russian territory,” one official said, per Politico.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Kyiv has largely relied on Western-supplied equipment to stave off Russia’s advance, saying US artillery has played a major role in its defense. The US recently earmarked some $25.7 billion in military equipment and weapons for Ukraine as part of a new $61 billion tranche of aid that was held back for months in Congress.
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