Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that when he visits Washington next week, he will press the case for Ukraine to use long-range missiles on targets inside Russia.
Zelenskyy was speaking hours after confirming that the United States and Britain had still not authorized Kyiv to use such weapons in this way.
But in his evening address Saturday he said: "We are convincing our partners — and we will continue to talk about this next week — that Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities."
During his Washington visit, Zelenskyy plans to share with U.S. President Joe Biden his "victory plan" to end the war. The Ukrainian leader also plans to speak with both major candidates for U.S. president: Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former president Donald Trump.
For weeks, Kyiv has been pressing the West to allow it to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Doing so, said Zelenskyy, could change the course of the war, 2½ years after Moscow invaded its neighbor.
"Neither America nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia, on any targets, at any distance," Zelenskyy told reporters late on Friday. "I think they are worried about an escalation."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the West to strike targets inside Russian territory would signify NATO countries were at war with Russia.
But Zelenskyy hinted he had not given up hope that Biden might yet be persuaded.
"We have had some decisions in the history of our relationship with Biden — very interesting and difficult dialogues," the Ukrainian leader said. "He later changed his point of view."
A close adviser to Biden said this month he would use his remaining time in office to "put Ukraine in the best possible position to prevail."
Fighting continues
Zelenskyy will travel to the United States after a summer of intense fighting.
Moscow's forces have been advancing in eastern Ukraine, while Kyiv has held onto swaths of Russia's Kursk region for weeks. The Russian army is now about 10 kilometers from the eastern Ukrainian hub of Pokrovsk, to where Kyiv has rushed people evacuated from frontline areas.
The war has dragged on for almost 31 months and efforts to end the fighting have so far proved unsuccessful.
Zelenskyy repeated that Ukraine was ready to invite Russia to a second international peace summit in November "because all our allies, including our closest ones" said Russia should be there.
The November summit, he said, would be "the foundation for talking in any format with Russia."
But on Saturday Russia said it would not take part in such a summit and repeated Putin's conditions that Moscow would only come to the table if Kyiv surrendered four of its regions.
'A very different situation'
Zelenskyy said he was taking into account that "we will have a very different situation in November" after the U.S. election.
He said he plans to meet with Harris to "see what she thinks about the victory plan" and "definitely" meet with Trump.
While Harris has indicated she will continue Biden's policies of backing Ukraine, Trump — who Zelenskyy is expected to meet Wednesday or Thursday — refused in a recent election debate to take sides over the war.
Trump has been highly critical of the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. Kyiv is concerned that if Trump wins a second term, Washington could weaken its commitment to Ukraine.
On the battlefield, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had struck two weapons depots in southern and western Russia, including a key site for Moscow's forces.
Russian authorities announced some evacuations and declared a local emergency.
Kyiv also said Russian attacks on Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rig had killed a 12-year-old boy and two women in their 70s. A 12-year-old girl and a woman in her 20s also died in a strike on the city of Nikopol.
