US the big holdout in allowing Ukraine to hit Russia with Western weapons (2024)

KYIV — Ukraine’s allies are tying themselves into knots over whether to allow donated weapons to hit targets inside Russia, and Vladimir Putin is issuing blood-curdling threats if they do. For Ukraine, however, such strikes are vital to its war effort.

“For us, getting permission to hit Russia with Western weapons is a matter of survival and our defense. We ask to strike back and strike at legitimate military targets in Russia,” Yehor Cherniev, a Ukrainian MP and head of the permanent delegation of Ukraine to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told POLITICO.

Kyiv’s pleas have grown desperate following Russian attacks near the country’s second city of Kharkiv, including a bombing campaign that is turning border towns and parts of Kharkiv into no-go wastelands.

“It is important that our partners have enough determination for preemptive protection against Russian terrorists, just as they would strike at any other terrorists — destroying them before they start taking lives,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement after Russian attacks on Kharkiv region last week.

Ukraine’s allies are listening. So far, the U.K., Sweden, Finland, the Baltic countries, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada and others have said they have no problem with Ukraine's using their weapons to hit Russia.

On Tuesday, France and Germany also agreed — with caveats.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Ukraine could “neutralize” targets in Russia "from which the missiles are fired, but not other civilian or military targets.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, standing alongside Macron, said Ukraine can use the weapons provided “within the framework of international law.” That opens the door for the use of donated arms in Russia, but also keeps the Kremlin guessing.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wants countries to reassess policies that “tie[] one hand of the Ukrainians on their back.”

Putin is trying to ensure his forces are protected from Ukrainian attacks, warning on Tuesday of “serious consequences” if those weapons are used.

American exceptionalism

That leaves the United States — the biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine — as the most prominent holdout in allowing Kyiv to attack Russia.

“There’s no change to our policy at this point, we don’t encourage or enable the use of U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday.

President Joe Biden is under pressure from Congress to change that position, but is holding firm.

Without a green light from Washington, Ukraine is stuck using its own missiles and drones to hit targets in Russia — but even that can draw flak from allies.

Ukraine’s campaign to hit Russia’s oil infrastructure earned a scolding from Washington, which was worried about the impact on global oil prices. In recent weeks Kyiv has also hit two Russian radar installations deep inside the country, again causing worry as the facilities are linked to Russia’s ballistic nuclear early warning network.

Kyiv says the strikes are justified. “Those radars were the eyes of Russia. And we at least partially shut them. We will continue to strike strategic targets in Russia with our means,” a Ukrainian intelligence officer told POLITICO, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kyiv is enormously frustrated not to be able to hammer Russian forces north of Kharkiv.

In the last month, Russian warplanes have launched more than 3,000 aerial bombs at Ukraine, mostly from jets in Russian airspace where Ukraine can't shoot them down, Zelenskyy said during a late-May visit to Spain. Just last week Russia killed dozens after launching bombs and missiles at a hypermarket and a printing house in Kharkiv.

“Having all intelligence, seeing where they accumulate their troops, their equipment, we did not have the opportunity to strike preemptively to prevent them from crossing the border. We had to react only after they crossed the border and because of that we lost some villages and people,” Cherniev said.

If Russia remains off limits, Ukraine will find it very difficult to win the war.

“The effectiveness of Ukrainian defense in general and in the Kharkiv region in particular depends on the ability to strike at the military command and support system of Russia,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst and research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies.

Bielieskov said that if Ukraine were allowed to use Western missiles to strike Russian airfields some 50 kilometers from the border, it could significantly hamper Moscow’s use of aerial bombs.

“Russian bombers are less likely to fly from farther airfields so often as it increases the demand for fuel. So as a result it will reduce the number of opportunities for them to bomb us so frequently,” Bielieskov said. “The lasting ban for Ukraine to use Western weapons in Russia gives the Kremlin a carte blanche for violent strikes that could turn Ukraine’s borderlands into a wasteland that will ease the Russian offensive.”

Not-so-red lines

The West is worried about crossing Russia’s “red lines” and sparking a wider war — maybe even a nuclear exchange. This week, Belgium confirmed it will give Ukraine F-16 fighter jets, but only on condition they not be flown over Russian territory.

Kyiv argues that Moscow’s threats are largely bluster, noting that the West also hesitated to give Ukraine shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, tanks, cruise missiles and fighter jets.

“We saw that with strikes on Crimea, and with the provision of HIMARS and other Western weapons to Ukraine, there used to be red lines, full of threats, not anymore,” Cherniev said.

Especially infuriating for Ukraine is the knowledge that its allies wouldn't accept such limits if their own forces were doing the fighting.

“U.S. military doctrine, for example, says that for effective defense on the front line, it is necessary to strike deep inside the enemy’s lines to weaken the pressure on the front line,” Bielieskov said.

“It is unfair that Ukraine is being asked to fight as the U.S. armed forces would never fight.”

This article has been updated to correct the day France and Germany made their statement. It was Tuesday.