Foreign Minister: Kyiv decides
Ukraine is allowed to attack Russian territory with US weapons
May 15, 2024, 8:01 p.m
Washington has repeatedly said that Ukraine should not use US weapons to attack Russian territory. Now Foreign Minister Blinken says that Kiev has to decide for itself. Calls for the ban to be lifted have recently become louder due to the offensive in the Russian-Ukrainian border area.
According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the US government does not prohibit Ukraine from attacking Russian territory with weapons from the United States. Blinken made this clear at a joint press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “We have not supported or enabled any attacks outside Ukraine. But Ukraine must decide for itself how it wants to wage this war to defend its territory,” said the US Secretary of State.
According to statements, the decision to use the weapons from the $61 billion aid package for targets in Russia rests with Kiev. There had previously been repeated criticism that the USA would ban such an operation, something that high-ranking officials had emphasized several times in the past.
Russia expert George Barros from the Institute for War Studies (ISW), which analyzes the Russian invasion of Ukraine on a daily basis, had just said in a statement on Monday long article the US government cited the ban. This would affect Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against the new offensive near Kharkiv, Barros said.
The well-known Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko also criticized US politics after Blinken’s guitar performance in a Ukrainian bar. The secretary of state’s intervention “could have worked much better if he had first announced an excellent aid package for Ukraine and a significant shift by the US government toward the use of US weapons against key military targets on Russian territory,” Ponomarenko wrote the platform X.
Russia attacks unmolested from its own airspace
According to Russia expert Barros, Ukraine could use US weapons to intercept aircraft over the Russian Belgorod region. The Kremlin troops’ jets are currently firing glide bombs from there unmolested in the direction of Kharkiv. “Russian aircraft can attack the city indefinitely without ever leaving the protected area of Russian airspace,” Barros said.
At the press conference, US Secretary of State Blinken also commented on Kiev’s request for two Patriot anti-aircraft systems for the Kharkiv region. The United States has only delivered one unit to Ukraine during the entire war, despite having many Patriot systems and being the country’s largest supporter.
However, there was still no firm commitment from Washington. “We’re concentrating heavily on Patriots and other forms of air defense and making sure we can find them and get them to Ukraine,” Blinken said simply. “Kharkiv is of course a priority. We have discussed this in detail and are working actively and vigorously on it.”