Ukraine is focusing its diplomatic efforts on convincing its allies to allow it to use NATO weapons against targets on Russian soil. kyiv has already managed to get other red lines imposed on it by its partners in the West to fall in the past, always after many months of tenacity and negotiations. The new Russian offensive on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has accelerated the campaign of international contacts by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break fear in the United States and Europe of a possible escalation of war if its weapons hit Russian territory.
On May 10, the invading troops launched a lightning offensive from the Russian province of Belgorod on Kharkiv (located just 30 kilometers from the border). Their advance has been at the cost of numerous casualties, but constant, largely thanks to the fact that Russian artillery, its planes and its drones can operate from neighboring Russian territory. The White House last week received a formal request from kyiv to use American weapons and other assistance against Russian territory, Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed to media in Washington on May 17.
Brown did not want to specify what actions Ukraine claimed to be able to undertake in Russia, but from his words it could be interpreted that it was also information from US satellites on the location of enemy bases. The intelligence provided by the Pentagon has been key in identifying the location of Russian troops and military centers within Ukraine, but it has avoided providing this data in Russia. Western conflict analysis centers such as the Institute for the Study of War have pointed out that the inability for Ukraine to respond on the other side of the border places the attacked country in a weak position to contain the offensive in Kharkiv.
Since last week, Zelensky has given several interviews in which he has stressed the need to be able to defend oneself on soil from the invader. The last statements in this regard occurred on May 21 in The New York Times: “What we have always proposed to President Joe Biden, but also to many leaders of other countries, is that we want to use weapons for defense.” “Their ability to hit us from a distance,” continued the Ukrainian head of state in reference to the Russian attacks, “is due to the fact that they are stationed in towns near the border. They do it from there because they know that we will not attack them, and because they use the Russian civilian population as a shield. And they do it calmly because they know that our partners have not given permission.”
The Ukrainian president named the weapons that his Armed Forces want to use, only against military objectives: he cited NATO howitzers — these would be used on the Kharkiv front, the only one from which Russian territory would be within reach of Ukrainian artillery. , the short-range Himars missiles, the long-range ATACMS missiles—both of American production—and the long-range British-French Storm Shadow-Scalp missiles. Zelensky also demanded, as he does repeatedly, a green light to attack with these missiles the airfields hundreds of kilometers from the front from which Russian bombers take off and operate.
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The United States agreed this April, after two years of discussions, to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles. It was a red line, another one, in which kyiv’s allies have ended up giving in. This was the case with the previous opposition to sending heavy armored vehicles by Germany and the United States, or the refusal during the first year and a half of the war to deliver combat aircraft to the invaded country. This summer, the first six units of F-16 fighters from Denmark are finally scheduled to land in Ukraine.
Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium have agreed to donate more than 70 F-16 units to Ukraine. Zelensky has assured that in order to stand up to Russian air dominance they would need at least 120 of these aircraft. The Russian Air Force has nearly 300 combat aircraft destined for the war scenario, according to Ukrainian military intelligence.
One of the reasons Biden ruled out delivering the F-16s for so long was fear that they would be used to bomb within Russian borders. For this same reason, Germany refuses to hand over its Taurus long-range missiles, despite the Ukrainian side’s commitment that this will not be the case.
Ukraine periodically bombs Russia, even more than 1,000 kilometers from the border. Military, industrial and energy infrastructures are the objective. It is achieving this with swarms of self-produced drone bombs that are intensely punishing the Russian oil industry. Washington has asked Zelensky to stop these actions because they could destabilize the global fuel market, but the warnings, expressed publicly even by Biden’s Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, have fallen on deaf ears.
The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Celeste Wallander, came to criticize the Ukrainian strategy in an appearance in the US Congress in which she considered the attacks against civilian infrastructure inappropriate for a democracy. Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, said on May 15 in kyiv, and repeated it in an appearance before Congress this Wednesday, that Washington’s position had not changed: it does not favor or promote the war spreading to Russia, “but in the end it is Ukraine that must decide how to carry out this war, a war of defense.” These last words, which are not new from the US Administration, have now been interpreted in the Ukrainian media as a sign that Washington could lift its veto. The New York Times He reported this Thursday that Blinken is in favor of this.
The campaign against the Russian oil industry coincides with the invader’s second offensive against the Ukrainian energy network. 80% of the country’s electrical capacity has been damaged and daily supply cuts have been introduced this spring for the entire population.
Ukraine’s Baltic allies are its main sponsors for a turnaround in NATO’s position. “From the beginning we made the mistake of putting limits on the Ukrainians, because we thought it would be seen as an escalation.” [de la guerra]”he said on May 21 on television LRT Gabrielus Landsbergis, Lithuanian Foreign Minister: “The Ukrainians must be able to strike on Russian territory, its logistical lines and the troops preparing to attack. There is only one side that is following the rules. These rules that we imposed on ourselves, we have to abandon.”
Zelensky has also opened another melon, and it is the possibility that his neighboring NATO member countries collaborate in the defense of Ukrainian cities by intercepting Russian missiles. The intervention of the United States, Jordan and the United Kingdom to intercept the missiles that Iran fired at Israel last April caused a stir in Ukrainian society. Why couldn’t the Ukrainians have this support from Romania and Poland? Oleksander Litvinenko, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security Council, called this Wednesday The Financial Times the limitations imposed by its allies are “totally unfair.” “It is what it is, for every big step forward, you must first take two steps back,” Zelensky said this week. “Every decision by our allies comes a year late.”
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