Ukraine is reportedly closing in on receiving permission from the U.S. and the U.K. to strike territory deep inside Russia with supplied long-range weaponry.
The reports come as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy are in Kyiv this week, which marks the first joint visit of its kind for more than a decade.
Kyiv has long urged its Western allies, including the U.S., to allow it to strike targets deep within Russian territory using weaponry such as the Washington-supplied ATACMS, ground-launched ballistic missiles.
Such requests have so far been denied over fears that granting permission to Ukraine to strike Russian territory would escalate the conflict that Russian President Vladimir Putin began in February 2022.
On Tuesday, Juliegrace Brufke, Axios’ Capitol Hill reporter, said she interviewed House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul about the matter on September 6.
“I talked to Blinken two days ago, and he is traveling with his counterpart from the UK to Kyiv to basically tell them that they will allow them [to hit Russia with ATACMS,” McCaul told Brufke, she wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Politico also reported, citing a Western official and two people familiar with discussions, that the Biden administration was finalizing a plan to expand where Ukraine’s military can strike inside Russia with long-range weapons.
The Guardian in the U.K. reported on Wednesday that government sources had signaled that a decision had already been made to allow Kyiv’s military to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia.
Read more at Newsweek.com
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