The Pentagon says Ukraine can use U.S.-provided weapons to strike back against any cross-border attack from inside Russia, so long as it does not use long-range munitions to strike deep inside Russian territory.
"The ability for Ukraine to fire back at those ground forces, using American-provided munitions, it's self-defense, and so it makes sense for them to be able to do that," Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder told reporters Thursday.
Asked to specify whether that permission extended beyond the Kharkiv region, Ryder responded, "Correct." He added that the U.S. policy calling on Ukraine not to use U.S.-provided ATACMS or long-range missiles to strike inside Russia has not changed.
President Joe Biden initially loosened restrictions on Ukraine's use of U.S.-provided munitions to allow strikes inside Russian territory late last month. The change was in response to Russian ground forces launching cross-border attacks from Russian territory into the northern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv. Before the change, Ukraine could not use U.S.-provided weapons to hit back at launch sites inside Russia.
Prior to Thursday, the Pentagon had repeatedly told reporters the loosened U.S. policy permissions were specific to defending the Kharkiv region.
"Ukraine requested permission to conduct counterfire in the Kharkiv area using U.S. weapons, and President Biden granted them permission to do that," Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in response to a VOA question last week on whether Ukraine could strike forces inside Russia who were launching attacks on Ukrainian forces outside Kharkiv.
"The ability to conduct counterfire in this close fight in the Kharkiv region, that's what this is all about, and the Ukrainians, my expectation is that they'll put that to good use," he added.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh gave a similar response to reporters on June 5.
"The policy change that you're referring to, and that was announced last week, was more about the crossfire within the Kharkiv region," she said.
'Self-defense is not escalation'
During a surprise appearance at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the U.S. for the policy change, which he described as allowing Ukraine to "use HIMARS in the Kharkiv region against bordering territory." He stressed, however, that the policy change wasn't enough.
"I've mentioned as an example before of the airfields from which Russia bombs Ukraine, knowing that Ukraine won't bomb them in response," he said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 7 that limiting Ukraine's ability to strike "legitimate military targets" inside Russia was akin to asking Ukrainians "to try to defend themselves, uphold the right of self-defense, with one hand tied on their back.
"Self-defense is not escalation," he said. "The border and the front line is more or less the same."
Retired General Frank McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command, told VOA on June 10 that Ukraine should be able to attack military targets inside Russia "with certain limits" on areas such as Russian nuclear-capable sites, rather than geography-specific limitations.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed the apparent policy expansion for Ukrainian ground strikes inside Russia in an interview with PBS News on Monday, saying that the permission extends wherever Russian forces are attempting to invade.
"It extends to anywhere that Russian forces are coming across the border from the Russian side to the Ukrainian side to try to take additional Ukrainian territory," Sullivan said, adding that it's "not about geography. It's about common sense."
Michael Carpenter, the senior director for Europe at the National Security Council, told VOA's Ukrainian Service on May 31 that the U.S. policy change applied to strikes on Russian "counterfire capabilities that are deployed just across the border," but did not limit Ukrainian targets specifically to the Kharkiv region.
"This is meant for Ukrainians to defend themselves against what would otherwise be a Russian sanctuary," he told VOA.
Hostile aircraft
The U.S. has apparently not placed any restrictions on striking military targets in Russian airspace.
Earlier this month, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters there was never a U.S. restriction on Ukrainians shooting down hostile aircraft, "even if those aircraft are not necessarily in Ukrainian airspace."
"They can shoot down Russian airplanes that pose an impending threat, and they have since the beginning of the war," he said.
