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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Washington to permit his forces to use US weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory as he looks to increase pressure on Moscow to end the 31-month war.
Zelenskyy made the plea on Friday in a meeting with western defence ministers in Germany, underscoring his determination to shift policies in many countries that have barred Kyiv from using their weapons to strike Russia. His visit to Ramstein marked his first time joining the meeting at the air base in person.
“We need to have this long-range capability not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” he said at the start of the meeting. The Ukraine contact group is a regular forum to co-ordinate lethal aid to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy’s request to about 50 allies comes as Kyiv has been able to seize more than 1,000 sq km in the Russian region of Kursk but now faces the challenge of holding on to that territory as Moscow sends reinforcements to try to dislodge Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian military is also facing setbacks in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. Zelenskyy said on Friday that Russia’s “most capable units . . . are involved in expanding the zone of occupation” and have made steady gains towards Pokrovsk, a strategic military supply and logistics hub. If Pokrovsk was captured, Russian forces could push towards Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, extending their control deeper into the country.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for the lifting of restrictions on the use of western-supplied, long-range weapons so that Ukraine’s military can strike Russian airfields and missile launchers, as well as ammunition depots, fuel storage and command and control centres that are key to Moscow’s war.
The US in recent months has allowed Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory for defensive strikes, shifting away from a blanket ban. But Zelenskyy is pressing Washington and other western countries to allow Ukraine to use long-range weaponry to strike deeper inside Russia as part of an overall strategy to raise the cost of the invasion for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We need to force Russia to seek peace. We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers, think about what they need, peace or Putin, and it is realistic to push them to choose peace,” Zelenskyy said on Friday.
Instead of changing policy on deeper strikes inside Russia, US officials have said Ukraine should prioritise using western weapons to defend its eastern and northern regions, retaining access to the Black Sea and holding Crimea — the peninsula annexed by Putin in 2014 — at risk.
Defence secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday announced $250mn in new lethal aid, to include urgently needed air defence.
“We hear your urgency and we share it,” Austin said.
On a visit to Washington last week, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov provided Washington a list specifying the targets that Kyiv would like to strike using US Army Tactical Missile Systems (Atacms), British Storm Shadow and French Scalp long-range missiles.
Russia has launched a spate of deadly air strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and military and civilian targets. An attack on a military institute in central Poltava on Tuesday killed 54 people and injured 297 others, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.
The Pentagon contends that Russia has moved most of the aircraft it uses to launch glide bombs beyond the 300km range of its Atacms and that Ukraine is better off using the limited number of the ballistic missile system it has against targets in Crimea.
US deputy national security adviser Jon Finer visited Ukraine this week to firm up Washington’s support for Kyiv ahead of the US presidential election in November. Some in the administration have suggested they are open to Kyiv’s pleas, though the US policy has not changed.
“The quickest way to end this war is to provide weapons to Ukraine,” said Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, in a meeting with Norway’s prime minister in Oslo on Friday. “Putin must realise that he cannot win on the battlefield, but must accept a just and lasting peace.”
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