The White House has not changed its policy about allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the U.S.-led coalition providing him with military assistance for permission to launch attacks deeper into Russian territory, but western allies have not agreed.
“I wouldn’t expect to see a change to that policy today,” Kirby said.
Earlier this week, President Joe Biden appeared to indicate a willingness to allow Ukraine’s use of such weapons. On Friday, he was set to meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, during which the issue of support for Ukraine will no doubt come up, Kirby said.
Both the British and French governments have indicated they may be willing to allow Ukraine’s use of western-supplied long-range missiles inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine’s use of such weapons provided by the United States and its western allies to strike inside his country would “change the very essence of the conflict.”
Kirby said the U.S. takes Putin’s “comments seriously," but added they are "not something that we haven’t heard before.”
He added that if Putin “is so concerned about the safety and security of Russian sites and cities, the easiest way to alleviate those concerns is to get his troops the hell out of Ukraine and end the war.”
Last week, during the 24th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where leaders from 57 countries and the European Union supporting Ukraine’s defense discussed their continued support for providing the country with military assistance, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he didn’t think the use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia would help end the war.
While he said he expects the conflict to be resolved through negotiations, Austin pledged another $250 million security assistance package for Ukraine last week that includes additional air defense, armored vehicles, tank weapons and munitions for rocket systems and artillery. The United States has so far provided $58 billion in military assistance to Ukraine to defend itself.
“We need to have this long-rage capability, not only on the divided territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace,” Zelensky said last Friday during his first visit to Ramstein Air Base for the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting. “We need to make Russian cities and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”
Since February 2022, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, more than 35,000 civilians have been killed, along with at least 500,000 soldiers on both sides.