“We’re working that out now,” Joe Biden has stated
According to a prominent member of US Congress, Washington plans to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-supplied ATACMS missiles to target deep within Russian territory. Axios reporter Juliegrace Brufke, citing Congressman Michael McCaul, claimed that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce the policy shift while visiting Kiev with his British counterpart David Lammy this week.
These restrictions were initially put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, despite supplying Ukraine with $200 billion or more in weapons. Kiev has been pushing for the removal of these restrictions.
“I talked to Blinken two days ago, and he is traveling with his counterpart from the UK to Kiev to basically tell them that they will allow them [to hit Russia with ATACMS],” McCaul, the Texas Republican chairing the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Brufke in an interview last Friday.
Blinken will be in Kiev on Wednesday “to show continued support for Ukraine’s defense,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller has confirmed. He did not mention any policy changes.
However, Bloomberg quoted Blinken on Tuesday as having “signaled” Washington’s change of heart, citing claims that Iran has provided Russia with ballistic missiles.
“We’re going to look and to listen” to Ukraine’s request, Blinken said during a press conference with Lammy in London. He added that US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will discuss the “missile issue” on Friday in Washington.
“We’re working that out now,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday, when asked about Ukraine’s long-range missile use.
Blinken claimed that Iran had delivered an unspecified number of Fath-360 missiles to Russia, despite months of Western warnings, and that Moscow will use them against Ukraine “within weeks.”
Iran has categorically denied the accusation, insisting it has not supported either party in the conflict.
“No missile was sent to Russia and this claim is a kind of psychological warfare,” senior military commander Fazlollah Nozari told Iranian media on Monday, while Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani pointed out that “Iran’s accusers are the ones who are among the biggest arms exporters to one side of the war.”
Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzya, has accused the West of being involved in the Ukrainian conflict “up to its ears,” and said the issue of arming Kiev will be discussed at the Security Council on Friday.
As late as August 27, the Pentagon that its policy on the use of long-range weapons had not changed. That was before Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, visited Washington with a reported list of Russian targets they sought approval to strike.
Ukraine has repeatedly launched drones as far as Moscow, infamously one on the roof of the Kremlin in May 2023. On Tuesday, another Ukrainian drone in Moscow Region, killing one civilian and injuring three.