U.S. Stresses no Change in View on Weapons Restrictions Ahead of U.K. Meeting

U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to discuss the loosening of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of donated long-range weapons when they meet on September 13 in Washington, but a White House spokesman said ahead of the meeting that there has been no change in Washington’s view.

The meeting between Biden and Starmer comes amid signs that the allies are growing more receptive to loosening restrictions on the use of the long-range weapons to allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia, but the United States is not planning to announce any new policy, White House national-security spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

“There is no change to our view on the provision of long-range strike capabilities for Ukraine to use inside of Russia,” Kirby said. “I’ll leave it to [Starmer] to decide what he wants…to talk about, but there’s just no change to our policy right now with respect to that…capability for all the reasons that we said we weren’t in support of it before.”

The United States previously said it restricted the use of the weapons over concerns that allowing Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia could cause an escalation in the war and possibly prompt Russia to use a nuclear weapon.

The Biden-Starmer meeting comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a tour of Europe in which he heard repeated appeals from Ukraine and its allies to lift the restrictions. He said at the conclusion of the trip that he would relay the comments to Biden, noting that in the past the United States has adapted its policies to fit the situation on the battlefield.

Biden in May altered U.S. policy to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-donated missiles into Russia to defend itself against a major Russian offensive that included missile and drone barrages fired from Russian territory. But Biden maintained a limit on the distance the U.S. missiles could strike, meaning Ukraine could only hit targets in regions close to the border.

The Guardian newspaper, quoting government sources, reported on September 12 that London had already given Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow missile for strikes deep into Russian territory. Other British media, however, reported that the United Kingdom might require Washington’s permission first because the weaponry contains U.S.-made components.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 12 warned against any change in policy that would allow Western weapons to be used for long-range strikes on his country’s territory, saying it would mean that the NATO alliance of which the United States and Britain are members, would be “at war” with Russia.

“If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will make the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face,” Putin said.

Putin claimed that the Ukrainian military would only be able to carry out such strikes when using data from NATO satellites and that only military personnel of NATO “can carry out flight tasks for these missile systems.”

On September 13, the chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, accused NATO of already being party to the all-out war that began with Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Without providing evidence, Vyacheslav Volodin accused NATO of helping Ukraine determine strategies, choosing Russian targets, and even of giving Kyiv orders.

“The United States, Germany, Britain, and France are discussing the possibility of strikes (by Ukraine) using long-range weapons on the territory of our country,” Volodin wrote on Telegram. “This is nothing but an attempt to camouflage and conceal their direct participation in military action.”

“In fact, the United States and its allies are actually trying to give themselves permission to carry out acts of aggression with missiles against Russia,” claimed Volodin, a close Putin ally.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on September 13 reiterated Berlin’s refusal to send long-range missiles to Ukraine, telling a news conference that Germany “has made a clear decision about what we will do and what we will not do. This decision will not change.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has recently ramped up his calls for Kyiv’s Western partners to loosen restrictions on donated weapons. Zelenskiy has argued that longer-range capability is needed to allow Ukraine to better defend itself against attacks as Russia has moved its long-range weaponry beyond Ukraine’s reach.

Russia has also made significant territorial gains on the ground in Ukraine’s east amid an ongoing offensive. It has also begun a counterattack to retake Russian territory overrun by Ukraine following a surprise incursion into Russia, the first since World War II.

Zelenskiy said on September 13 that the counterattack in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine took more than 1,300 square kilometers of territory in the space of a few weeks, was expected but had so far seen “no serious success.”

The Ukrainian president also said at a conference in Kyiv that the situation around the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which Russian forces aim to capture as they advance in the Donetsk region, remained difficult but was stabilizing.

Zelenskiy said that he plans to present a “victory plan” to end the war with Russia to Biden later this month.

“[It] can pave the way for a reliable peace — for the full implementation of the peace formula,” he said at a conference organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation charity.

In recent weeks, Zelenskiy has said that Ukraine has no intention of holding the Russian territory it controls as a result of the incursion launched in August. However, he said it gave Ukraine leverage for future negotiations and that captured Russian soldiers were valuable in exchanges for Ukrainian troops captured by Russia.

During the conference, Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed the full support from its allies in order to be in a strong position to negotiate with Russia, and repeated his calls for the West to help Ukraine carry out long-range strikes into Russia.

He announced on September 13 that the release of 49 more Ukrainian POWs had been secured in a swap for an undisclosed number of Russian soldiers. It was the second such exchange since the Ukrainian incursion into Russia, with the first involving 115 prisoners from each side on August 24.