After his visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken calls on President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with American weapons.
The New York Times writes about it.
From the first deliveries of American weapons to Ukraine, Biden never refused one condition: President Volodymyr Zelensky had to guarantee that the Ukrainian army would never use these weapons on the territory of Russia. According to Biden, the repeal of this ban will prevent him from "avoiding World War III."
However, against the background of the new Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, the State Department is stimulating debates in the presidential administration regarding its mitigation.
The proposal to allow Ukraine to strike the Russian Federation with American weapons, which Blinken insisted on after visiting Kyiv last week, is still in the formative stage. And now it is not known how many of his colleagues from Bidenʼs closest circle supported this call. So far, this proposal has not been officially presented to the president.
However, according to the publicationʼs sources who participated in the discussions, Blinkenʼs position has changed against the background of the new offensive of the Russian Federation.
Since Russia launched an attack on the Kharkiv region, Ukraine has once again been trying to force the Biden administration to cancel the ban on the use of American weapons for strikes on Russian territory.
As the main argument, senior Ukrainian officials say that such a ban prevented Ukraine from attacking Russian positions when they were preparing their last offensive. They claim that Ukraine needs to attack military depots on enemy territory for its own defense.
The Ukrainian authorities watched the Russians gather near the border for weeks, but because of Washingtonʼs policy, Ukraine could not use the US-provided weapons for a pre-emptive strike.
Russia is well aware of this limitation, which is why it was able to concentrate military equipment and at least 30 000 soldiers on the border, without fear of being hit by US-supplied ATACMS ballistic missiles, which Ukraine used to destroy the enemy on the front.
In recent months, Ukraine has been actively attacking Russian oil refineries, as a result of which Russia has run out of gasoline. The Financial Times wrote that the US even called on Ukraine to stop attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, as this could raise world oil prices and provoke attacks on Ukrainian energy in response.
At the same time, Ukraine attacks Russian refineries mainly with the help of its own drones, which do not have the power and speed of American weapons. At the same time, Russian air defenses shoot down Ukrainian drones and missiles more and more often, while improving their electronic warfare techniques.
Meanwhile, Great Britain already allows Ukraine to strike with its weapons on the territory of the Russian Federation. The countryʼs foreign minister, David Cameron, said this month that Ukraine has the right to use London-provided weapons to strike targets in Russia, and it is up to Kiev to decide whether to do so.
And Blinken said at a press conference in Ukraine with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba on May 15 that Washington does not encourage strikes against Russia with American weapons, but "Ukraine must decide for itself what to do." At the same time, officially, the position of the White House on this issue remains unchanged.