Ukraine’s struggle to defend itself against Russia’s massive offensive in the Kharkiv region has underscored a pressing issue that Kiev has long sought to quash: the ban on firing U.S. weapons into Russia’s interior.
Russia launched its offensive on Kharkiv from the neighboring Belgorod region, and some Ukrainian officials argue that the attack could have been mitigated if they had been allowed to strike targets in that Russian province.
A delegation of five members of the Ukrainian parliament traveled to Washington this week to meet with Biden administration officials and congressional lawmakers in an attempt to pressure the US to reverse the ban.
But during a media roundtable in Washington, Ukrainian lawmakers expressed palpable frustration that the US still opposes the policy.
“It’s as if someone attacked Washington, D.C., from the state of Virginia, and you said we’re not going to attack Virginia for some reason,” said David Arahamiya, head of a Ukrainian congressional group on U.S. relations and lawmaker who led the delegation this week.
“It’s crazy. The military, like the generals, don’t understand. So they’re putting pressure on us as politicians, how to stop [the policy] this is crazy.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during a trip to Kiev this week, said the US was committed to ensuring Ukraine could win the war against Russia, but stressed that Kiev should focus on retaking Ukrainian territory.
“Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it is going to conduct this war, a war that it is leading in defense of its freedom, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity,” Blinken said at a press conference. “We were clear about our own policy.”
Ukraine’s lobbying for the US to lift the ban comes as Russia advances into the region northeast of Kharkiv and pressures Ukrainian forces along the 600-mile eastern front.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted that Kyiv is facing difficulties after the U.S. delayed months before approving a national security supplement that includes $61 billion to support Ukraine .
But “we have to constantly weigh what we provide, what we allow them to use weapons for, with our desire to ensure that this does not result in a conflict that spreads beyond Ukraine,” he told The Hill.
Speaking about Russian dynamics, Kelly added that Ukraine was rightly trying to “present some options on how to turn this situation around.”
Ukraine has long argued that its ability to attack legitimate military targets in Russia is vital to its own defense.
Instead of political change, Ukraine has resorted to attacking Russia’s interior with its own weapons, including cheap drones that have harassed Russian targets such as oil refineries. The campaign to target oil refineries with drones has gained pace and breadth in recent months.
But Ukrainian officials say there is no substitute for U.S.-made weapons like the High Mobility Artillery Missile System (HIMARS) or valuable long-range artillery like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).
Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Ukrainian think tank Center for Transatlantic Dialogue, which advises Kiev, said Russia has moved its command centers within its own borders and beyond the reach of HIMARS.
“And they feel completely safe,” he said in an email. “Imagine how strange this situation is: whenever something goes wrong, the Russians can always retreat to their territory, regroup and start again – Ukraine cannot hit them with effective weapons like ATACMS.”
Skrypchenko said that if the ban had been lifted before the Kharkiv offensive, it could have prevented Russia from massing troops on the border.
“The use of weapons like Stingers inside Russia would also help repel front-line Russian bombers dropping guided bombs on front-line cities and Ukrainian defense positions,” he said. “Together with F-16s, it could be a game changer to stop Russia from advancing in many places.”
Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandra Ustinova, deputy head of the parliamentary group for relations with the US, warned that Kharkiv could become the next Mariupol, the southeastern Ukrainian city that was destroyed in the first days of the war.
“If we are not allowed to fire Russian weapons that are on the border right now, we have a huge possibility of losing major cities and the region because they [Russia] we know about this restriction,” she said at the roundtable in Washington this week.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argued in an analysis published earlier this week that US policy “makes no sense” and is “severely compromising Ukraine’s ability to defend itself” against the Kharkiv offensive.
U.S. policy is preventing Ukraine from responding to the threat of precision-guided glide bombs, which Ukrainian forces have struggled to defeat, wrote George Barros, the Russian team and geospatial intelligence lead for the Russia-Ukraine war at ISW.
Barros said Russia is using its airspace as a “sanctuary” and that Ukraine cannot effectively defend itself against glide bomb threats without intercepting Russian aircraft in Russian airspace.
“Neither Russia nor any other state has the right to consider its sovereign territory as inviolable in a war of aggression that it has initiated,” he wrote. “Establishing the principle that nuclear-armed states can achieve such inviolability through escalating threats encourages other potential predators to imagine that they too can attack with impunity and demand refuge on their own territory.”
Ukraine’s Western allies have long feared escalating war between Ukraine and Russia, especially as Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons.
But Skrypchenko, of the Center for Transatlantic Dialogue, said Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russia’s interior with its own weapons and worked with Russian volunteers to attack targets in the country — all without nuclear escalation.
“So maybe it’s time for us to stop drawing our own lines and continue informing Russia about them,” he said. “It is an existential war for the survival of the Ukrainian people, and not just a conflict where the parties try to achieve various strategic objectives on each other’s territory.”
But with Russia making critical advances on the eastern front, there have been growing calls for more to be done, including from French President Emmanuel Macron, who floated the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron signaled during a trip to Kiev earlier this month that London would not stop Ukraine from using British weapons to attack inside Russia.
On a interview with ReutersCameron said “Ukraine has that right”.
“Just as Russia is attacking inside Ukraine, we can fully understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it is defending itself,” he said.
But the US remained steadfast in its adherence to the policy. Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the US often conveys this message to Ukrainian authorities.
“We believe that the equipment, the capabilities that we are giving to Ukraine, that other countries are giving to Ukraine, should be used to take back Ukrainian sovereign territory,” she said. “The weapons provided, again, are for use on the battlefield.”
John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former ambassador to Ukraine, said U.S. policy undermines its own goal of ensuring that Russia does not win the war.
“This goes against the geopolitical interests of the United States and, from a humanitarian point of view, is inexcusable,” he said.
“We have crossed countless supposed Kremlin red lines without seeing a mushroom cloud. And of course the [British] told the Ukrainians that you can use our weapons wherever you send them… so the red line has already been partially crossed.”
On Capitol Hill, some Republicans want to see Ukraine deploy U.S. weapons as it sees fit.
“They should use guns to win the war,” said Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), also on the committee, said he has “no problem with that.”
“If they were actually attacking and destroying civilian targets, the story might be different,” he said. “But in this specific case, it seems to me that there is no escalation in this. Escalation has already occurred by the Russian army.”
But Democrats are more hesitant to question Biden’s policies.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said she had questions about what weapons Ukraine wants to use and how exactly they would be used, while asking for assurances first about how other U.S. weapons were used like cluster munitions.
“At this time,” she said, “restrictions must remain in place.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
