Ukrainian rescue teams on Friday at the scene of an overnight Russian rocket attack on a residential building in Kharkiv that killed at least five people and injured 25. Ukraine has won permission it has long sought from Washington to use U.S.-supplied weapons to try to pre-empt these types of attacks. Photo Sergey Kozlov/EPA-EFE
May 31 (UPI) — U.S. President Joe Biden has for the first time authorized Ukraine‘s military to use American-supplied weapons for limited strikes against military targets on Russian territory that pose an imminent threat amid Russia’s offensive in the northeast, U.S. officials said.
The removal of the ban on the use of U.S. arms gives Ukrainian commanders in Kharkiv province clearance to counterattack Russian forces just over the border including preemptive strikes, CBS News, The Washington Post and NBC News reported.
“The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S.-supplied weapons for counter-fire purposes in the Kharkiv region, so Ukraine can hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them — or preparing to attack them,” a U.S. official told CBS News.
An official told The Washington Post that the Ukrainian military would be authorized to use U.S. weapons to “hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them” near Kharkiv.
Ukraine is still barred from mounting strikes deeper into Russia using U.S.-made weapons such as Lockheed Martin’s long-range Army Tactical Missile System, a surface-to-surface weapon capable of striking targets well beyond the range of existing artillery, rockets and other missiles.
“Our policy with respect to prohibiting the use of [Army Tactical Missile System] or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed,” the official told CBS News.
However, Russian military aircraft can still be targeted with officials insisting there had never been any prohibition on Ukraine “shooting down a Russian airplane over Russian soil that’s coming to attack them.”
There was no immediate comment from the White House or State Department.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s administration had been pressing for the policy change as more and villages and towns fall to Russian forces advancing on Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, safe in the knowledge the ban means Ukraine cannot retaliate.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly floated the possibility of a shift during a visit to Moldova on Wednesday when he told a press briefing the United States had “adapted and adjusted” to changes on the battlefield and changes in how Russia was “pursuing its aggression, escalation.”
“We haven’t encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but Ukraine, as I’ve said before, has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself. We’re going to make sure that it has the equipment it needs to do that.
“Another hallmark of our support for Ukraine over these now more than two years has been to adapt,” Blinken said.
“As the conditions have changed, as the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed in terms of how it’s pursuing its aggression, escalation, we’ve adapted and adjusted too, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that. “
The shift by Washington comes as more of its partners in Europe have been moving toward dropping their own bans on their weapons being used against targets inside Russia and are looking to the United States, as Ukraine’s largest military backer, to take the lead.
Earlier this month, British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said Ukraine had the right to attack targets on Russian territory and there were no restrictions on how it could employ British-supplied weapons.
“Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it’s defending itself,” he said during a visit to Kyiv to deliver a British pledge of $3.75 billion annually in military support “for as long as necessary.”
Cameron, however, stopped short of explicitly authorizing the use of British weapons to strike targets on Russian soil.
Britain has had an understanding with Kyiv that its long-range Storm Shadow missile must only be used within sovereign Ukrainian territory — although they have been used to attack Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014 and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet which is based out of Sevastopol.
Russia rebuked Cameron over his May 2 comments calling them “another very dangerous claim,” warning they risked widening the conflict.
“This is a direct escalation of tension around the Ukrainian conflict, which would potentially pose a threat to European security,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
