United States President Joe Biden has given Ukraine the green light to use American weapons to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, reported Sky News.
Kharkiv is a Ukrainian city close to the border which has been subjected to intense bombing by Russia over the past few weeks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have been increasingly vocal in making the case that the restriction was putting Ukrainian forces in an untenable situation.
Russia made advances in the area as the United States and Western Europe delayed supplying Ukraine with the weaponry it needed to defend itself from Russian aggression.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Russian border.
However, U.S. officials stated that the U.S. policy calling on Ukraine not to use American long-range missiles and other munitions to strike inside Russia offensively has not changed.
Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, Biden had barred Ukraine from using American-made weaponry to launch strikes on Russian territory, concerned that the action could be seen as provocative and lead to Moscow widening the war.
Meanwhile, a top Russian official has said Ukraine striking with US weapons inside of Russia could mean war with NATO and warned that Moscow’s nuclear threats are not a bluff.
NATO is an intergovernmental military alliance comprising 30 European states plus the United States and Canada.
NATO adheres to the principle that an attack against one or several of its members is considered an attack against all.
Responding to Biden partially lifting restrictions on how Ukraine can use American-supplied weapons, Dmitry Medvedev issued a series of warnings to the West.
Dmitry Medvedev was President of Russia (2008–2012), Prime Minister of Russia (2012–2020), and is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020.
Medvedev said “no one can rule out” when tensions with the West will escalate to its “last stage” – and that Moscow will consider any long-range weapons used by Ukraine to strike inside Russia as being controlled by NATO. He said:
This is no military assistance, this is participation in a war against us. Such actions could well become a casus belli [an act that provokes a war].
He also said it would be a “fatal mistake” on the part of the West to think that Russia was not ready to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
Medvedev warned about the potential to strike unnamed hostile countries with strategic nuclear weapons. He said:
This is, alas, neither intimidation nor bluffing. The current military conflict with the West is developing according to the worst possible scenario.
There is a constant escalation when it comes to the firepower of NATO weapons being used. Therefore, nobody today can rule out the conflict’s transition to its final stage.
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