Let us use US weapons to strike inside Russia, pleads Ukraine amid Kharkiv advance
Ukrainian officials have flown to Washington to plead for the United States to follow Britain and give permission to fire American missiles at targets inside Russia.
Ukrainian parliamentarians have blamed US restrictions for allowing Russia to build up its forces behind the border and then attack towards Kharkiv last week.
A frustrated Ukrainian soldier told The Telegraph how he had to stand and watch Russia amass tens of thousands of soldiers behind the border over the past few weeks before launching an attack on Friday 20 miles north of Kharkiv.
“We could have disrupted Russian plans before the actual engagement but we couldn’t because we didn’t have permission from the US government,” he said, insisting on anonymity.
Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission on arms and munitions: said, “We saw their military sitting 1km or 2km from the border inside Russia and there was nothing we could do about that.”
This month, Lord Cameron travelled to Kyiv to tell Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, that he could use British missiles to strike targets inside Russia but US officials still insist that American weapons can only be used to strike Russian forces in occupied parts of Ukraine.
But now, with the Kremlin on the front foot and launching attacks from Russia, pressure is building for a change to this policy.
Ukrainian commanders have warned that Russia is building up forces behind its border near Sumy, 90 miles north-west of Kharkiv, and analysts said Washington needs to drop its target restrictions.
“Ukraine must be allowed to defend itself with all the tools at its disposal,” said John Foreman, Britain’s former defence attache in Moscow and Kyiv.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also said that the attack from Russia marked a tactical shift by Moscow, which, since 2022, had only launched land attacks from occupied Ukraine.
“I think it would be prudent for the US to reconsider this policy in this case,” he said.
Russia’s cross-border attack opened a new frontline which threatens Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and has forced Ukrainian commanders to reposition troops from battlefields in the Donbas region.
Late on Tuesday evening, Ukrainian officials said that some units in the region had performed a tactical retreat, although they continued to deny that Russian forces had captured the town of Vovchansk.
“Our units have moved to more advantageous positions in some areas around Lukyantsi and Vovchansk to save the lives of our soldiers and avoid losses from enemy fire and attacks. Fighting is ongoing,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement.
Both Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers claimed that heavy fighting was still taking place in Vovchansk.
Ukrainian commanders have been briefing through the week that the battlefield situation in Kharkiv was now critical and the EFE Spanish news agency quoted diplomatic sources as saying that Mr Zelensky had cancelled a planned trip to Spain and Portugal because of the Russian advances.
In his evening address, Mr Zelensky described the situation near Kharkiv as “the most difficult”.
“Everything is quite tense but we have reinforced in all directions, including the Kharkiv ones,” he said
Reports have said that 7,000 people have been evacuated from the area around the Ukraine-Russia border since the attack.
Ukrainian officials have insisted that they have no plans to evacuate Kharkiv despite increased bombardment on the city of 1.3 million people.
“The enemy uses the technique of intimidating people so that people leave the city but there is no talk yet about evacuation from the city of Kharkiv,” said Ihor Terekhov, the city’s mayor.
