US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are due to meet amid signs they are increasingly receptive to easing restrictions on the use of donated long-range weapons in Ukraine, as Moscow issued a stark warning not to allow Kiev to push deeper into Russian territory. .
The contentious issue is expected to be a major topic of discussion when Biden and Starmer meet in Washington on September 13, a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a tour of Europe in which he heard repeated calls from Ukraine and its allies to lift the restrictions .
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Biden reversed US policy in May to allow Ukraine to fire US-donated missiles at Russia to defend against a major Russian offensive that has included missile and drone fire launched from Russian territory. But Biden maintained a limit on the distance at which US missiles could hit, meaning Ukraine could only hit targets in regions close to the border.
Citing government sources, the Guardian newspaper reported on September 12 that London had already given Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow missile to strike deep into Russian territory. However, other British media reported that the UK may first need Washington’s permission because the weapons contain US-made components.
On September 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against any change in policy that would allow Western weapons to be used for long-range strikes on his country’s territory, saying it would mean the NATO alliance, of which the United States and Britain are members, would be “at war” with Russia.
“If that is the case, then taking into account the change in the nature of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats we will face,” Putin said.
Putin claimed that the Ukrainian military would only be able to carry out such strikes using data from NATO satellites and that only NATO military personnel “can perform flight tasks for these missile systems”.
On September 13, the speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, accused NATO of already being a party to an all-out war that began with Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Without providing evidence, Vyacheslav Volodin accused NATO of helping Ukraine determine strategies, choosing Russian targets and even giving orders to Kiev.
“The United States, Germany, Britain and France are discussing the possibility of strikes (by Ukraine) using long-range weapons on the territory of our country,” Volodin said. he wrote on Telegram. “This is nothing more than an attempt to mask and conceal their direct participation in military action.”
“The United States and its allies are actually trying to give themselves permission to carry out missile aggression against Russia,” said Volodin, a close Putin ally.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently stepped up his calls for Kyiv’s Western partners to ease restrictions on donated weapons. Zelensky argued that the longer-range capability was needed to better defend Ukraine against attacks as Russia moved its weapons to long distances beyond Ukraine’s range.
Russia has also made significant territorial gains in territory in eastern Ukraine amid the ongoing offensive. It also launched a counterattack to retake Russian territory occupied by Ukraine after a surprise incursion into Russia, the first since World War II.
Zelensky said on September 13 that a counteroffensive in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has seized more than 1,300 square kilometers of territory over the course of several weeks, was expected but had so far not seen “any serious success”.
The Ukrainian president also told a conference in Kyiv that the situation around the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which Russian forces aim to capture as they advance in the Donetsk region, remains difficult but is stabilizing.
Zelensky said he plans to present a “victory plan” to Biden later this month to end the war with Russia.
“It can pave the way to reliable peace – to the full implementation of the peace formula,” he said at a conference organized by the charity Viktor Pinchuk Foundation.
In recent weeks, Zelensky has said Ukraine has no intention of holding Russian territory it controls as a result of the invasion launched in August. But he said it gives Ukraine leverage for future negotiations and that captured Russian soldiers are valuable in exchange for Ukrainian troops captured by Russia.
On September 13, he announced that the release of another 49 Ukrainian prisoners of war had been secured in exchange for an undisclosed number of Russian troops. It was the second such exchange since the Ukrainian invasion of Russia, with the first involving 115 prisoners from each side on 24 August.
During the conference, Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed full support from its allies to be in a strong position to negotiate with Russia, and repeated his calls for the West to help Ukraine carry out long-range strikes against Russia.
Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Germany that Russia’s use of US long-range strike weapons had made no difference for Ukraine, saying that Russia had already been forced to move its glide bombs out of range of US-made bombs. Army tactical missile systems.
Austin also noted that Ukraine itself had significant capabilities to attack targets well beyond the range of Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile.
But on the last day of Blinken’s European tour in Poland on September 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the US secretary of state that Ukraine needed better defense capabilities because Moscow was “committing war crimes by attacking civilian targets”.
“The missiles that hit these civilian targets were fired from bombers from Russian territory. These bombers take off from airports on the territory of Russia,” said Sikorski. “The victim of aggression has the right to defend himself.”
Other European leaders expressed themselves similarly.
Blinken told a news conference in Warsaw that “as what Russia does has changed, as the battlefield has changed, we have adapted,” echoing remarks he made on 9/11 in Kiev.
He said one of the purposes of his visit to Ukraine was “to hear from our Ukrainian partners what they think they need now to deal with the current battlefield, including eastern Ukraine and other parts of the country,” Blinken said.
“I can tell you that as we move forward, we will do exactly what we have already done, which is to adapt as necessary … to defend against Russian aggression,” Blinken said.
