President Joe Biden on Thursday rejected calls by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to lift restrictions and to allow Kyiv to use U.S. weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia.
"If he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn't," Biden said of Zelenskyy, The Hill reported. "The question is: What is the best use of the weaponry he has?
"I got him more long-range capacity, as well as defensive capacity. I'm following the advice of the chief of staff of the military, the secretary of defense, and my intelligence people. And we're making a day-to-day basis on how far they should go in. That's a logical thing to do."
In the final hours of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Zelenskyy said, "If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations," according to The Hill.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. had been steadfast against Ukraine using any of its weapons to strike inside Russian territory, fearing the action could be seen as provocative and lead to a broader conflict with Moscow.
But Biden in May partially lifted the restrictions to help Ukraine defend Kharkiv, its second-largest city that sits just 12 miles from the Russian border.
Great Britain said this week it would allow Ukraine to strike deeper inside Russia with British-provided long-range missiles, and NATO has backed Ukraine's push for more latitude in its use of Western-supplied weapons. But other countries like Germany have followed the U.S.'s lead and held back, according to The Hill.
"There has been a clear decision, and the American president has said it again and again, that the weapons should not be used outside Ukrainian territory," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said following the NATO summit. "We have made a small adjustment with regard to attacks that have been started in the immediate vicinity of Kharkiv on Russian territory.
"It remains our task to make sure that we support Ukraine to the maximum, but that we don't want an escalation between Russia and NATO. This requires us to be wise and to be clear."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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