KRAINE’S FRUSTRATION is growing by the day over restrictions that the Biden administration has imposed on the use of American-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia.
The EU must convince Washington to “lift restrictions on long-range strikes on all legitimate military targets in Russia,” Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
Ukraine wants the EU to use its influence to convince Washington to lift restrictions on its use of Western weapons on Russian territory, as Kyiv seeks to build on its battlefield gains and fend off a new wave of attacks.
The EU “can and should play a role in persuading the United States to make this decision happen,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told POLITICO in an interview ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels Thursday.
Ukraine has been pleading with allies to allow its troops to deploy Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, as it faces a new assaults on its cities and energy infrastructure while continuing to make advances in its incursion into Russia’s Kursk.
Allies, and particularly the United States, are resisting, arguing such a move could be escalatory.
Kyiv needs “support to finally lift restrictions on long-range strikes on all legitimate military targets in Russia,” Kuleba said. “Of course this decision lies mainly with the United States and the U.K., but France is also a party and part of the EU.”
Today’s meeting in Brussels, which will be dominated by the war in Ukraine, takes place as Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, and Andriy Yermak, senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, travel to D.C. to argue that restrictions on the use of Western weapons should be lifted.
As well as the risk of escalation, the Biden administration has more recently been stressing its belief that there is little tactical advantage in allowing weapons to hit targets in Russia because many of the assets have been moved out of range. But POLITICO reported this week that Umerov and Yermak will, in a last-ditch effort to change minds, present a list of long-range targets in Russia they believe Kyiv’s military can hit if Washington were to lift its restrictions on U.S. weapons.
French President Emmanuel Macron previously opened the door to allowing Ukraine to strike military bases well inside Russia with Western weapons.
Kuleba said he doesn’t “question the good intention” of the French president. “But the fact is that we still cannot shoot … The moment we can shoot, the moment we have enough missiles and can use them, then it will work. But as of now we are still in the process of talking, of negotiating.”
