President Biden will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weaponry against limited military targets inside Russia, officials said Thursday, a dramatic reversal of a long-standing precautionary measure that comes as Kyiv struggles to defend its second-largest city from a withering onslaught.
The policy shift, disclosed by U.S. officials on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s decision, authorizes Ukrainian commanders to “hit back against Russian forces that are attacking them or preparing to attack them” in and around Kharkiv, near the border in northeast Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials in his government have campaigned for the shift with increasing urgency as Russia has pressed its assault there, emboldened by the Kremlin’s knowledge of Washington’s red lines, officials in Kyiv say.
The decision draws Biden even deeper into a war in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly raised the prospect of a nuclear strike, a concern for a U.S. leader who matured amid the U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontations of the 1960s. Biden has been cautious about escalation — but also mindful that the Ukrainians have repeatedly been granted greater capabilities and faced down a Kremlin that did little in response.
A growing number of the United States’ European allies in recent days also had urged the administration to lift its opposition, signaling an intent to allow their own weapons to be used against military targets on Russian soil. Although Ukraine has used some European arms as well as their own to fight back, Washington’s say-so has been the most important because of the quantity and the quality of its equipment.
The shift allows Ukraine to use U.S.-provided artillery and rocket launchers to hit Russian troops and equipment just across the border from Kharkiv and to strike missiles headed toward Ukrainian territory, U.S. officials said. They emphasized that the Biden administration’s policy barring longer-range strikes inside Russia “has not changed.”
“This is in response to the Ukrainian request, which was to be able to respond to attacks that are emanating from that area” in Russia’s Belgorod region, “to be able to hit Russian forces and arms depots,” one U.S. official said, adding that “Ukraine is not asking for a blanket policy change, and we’re not changing that policy.”
The Russian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Speaking earlier Thursday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s chief spokesman, chastised the United States and its NATO allies, saying the alliance was responsible for setting off “a new round of escalating tension.”
“They are doing this deliberately,” Peskov said. “We are hearing a lot of belligerent statements.”
Biden’s reassessment, first reported by Politico, was several weeks in the making. It is a byproduct, officials said, of Russia’s renewed cross-border assault on Kharkiv, the mounting pressure from across Europe and a visit to Kyiv this month by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that reinforced the peril facing Ukraine..
