President Joe Biden‘s administration is maintaining its policy of restricting Ukraine’s use of U.S.-provided weapons to hit military targets deep within Russian territory despite growing pressure to lift those rules.
Ukrainian leaders were among the chorus of officials who have pushed for any NATO ally who has put restrictions on their use of weapons to remove them during this week’s 75-year anniversary NATO summit that took place in Washington, D.C., though the attention is on the United States, given the large share of military aid it provides.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the restrictions “crazy” on Thursday, while one of his top advisers, Andriy Yermak, told reporters earlier during the summit that the restrictions have made it “impossible to fight” effectively.
Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, during his final summit as the leader of the alliance, said there was “no doubt” that Ukraine has the “right to use weapons they have received … to hit legitimate military targets on Russian territory.”
The subject of these restrictions has become a significant issue in recent months as Russian forces began attacking the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv from just over the border in Russian territory. So the U.S. loosened the restrictions in late May to allow Ukrainian forces to hit targets just over the border.
The military targets they’re looking to hit that are not within that range include weapons production facilities, military facilities, airplanes, rocket launchers, and places where Russian forces are firing from into Ukraine.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) called the president’s initial loosening of restrictions a “half-measure” and urged him to cut out all restrictions for the Ukrainians.
McCaul argued this week that Biden would be “complicit in the deaths of innocent children” if he did not “allow Ukraine to strike all military targets in Russia immediately,” while Turner told the Washington Examiner that “more Ukrainians will die” if the policy isn’t changed.
The administration has “used this timid concern of provocative and escalation the entire time and have left Ukraine in a war of unending attrition,” Turner added. “I think, ultimately, the administration will release these restrictions. It will be like everything else that they’ve done — they’ll say no a thousand times and then ultimately concede, and it’ll be for the better of Ukraine.”
Biden, in one of the most high-profile press conferences of his political career on Thursday night, defended the policy, which he said was supported by top U.S. military leaders.
“For example, should Zelensky — he’s not, but if he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn’t,” he said, adding, “We’re making a day-to-day basis on what they should and shouldn’t — how far they should go in. That’s a logical thing to do.”
McCaul told the Washington Examiner that Biden “blatantly avoided providing a direct answer to this important question because he is not in command,” and he urged Democratic lawmakers to get the president to “step aside … for the security of our nation” amid concerns about his mental fitness for a second term in office.
“The truth is that no U.S.-provided weapons in Ukraine have anywhere near the range required to strike Moscow — nor is that what President Zelensky has asked for,” McCaul added. “Ukraine merely wants the ability to employ the ATACMS, that I ensured in the supplemental, to strike military targets in Russian territory further from the front lines to save innocent lives and gain a decisive advantage on the battlefield.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters earlier on Thursday that “we have a commonsense policy about cross-border strikes when Russia is attacking from the other side of the border,” though he added, “We have not authorized the use of ATACMS for deep strike into Russia. And I don’t have any announcements for you all today.”
The debate on the restrictions also comes after Russia carried out a massive aerial assault on several Ukrainian cities, leaving dozens dead. A children’s hospital in Kyiv was among the buildings hit in the attack.
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Back in May, prior to the Biden administration’s initial reduction in restrictions for Ukraine, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly adopted a declaration that urged allies to lift “some restrictions on weapons used by NATO allies to strike legitimate targets in Russia.”