US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons as Russia deploys thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war, a US official and three other people familiar with the matter said.
The decision allowing Kyiv to use the Army Tactical Missile System for attacks farther inside Russia comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin positions North Korean troops along Ukraine’s northern border to try to reclaim territory seized by Ukrainian forces.
Biden’s move follows the presidential election victory of former US president Donald Trump, who has said he would bring a swift end to the war and raised uncertainty about whether he would continue the US’ military support for Ukraine.
Photo: AFP
The official and the others knowledgeable about the matter were not authorized to discuss the US decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s reaction on Sunday was notably restrained.
“Strikes are not made with words,” he said during his nightly video address. “Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves.”
Zelenskiy and many of his Western supporters have been pressing Biden for months to allow Ukraine to strike military targets deeper inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles, saying the US ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.
Zelenskiy’s statement came shortly after he wrote a message of condolence on Telegram following a Russian attack on a nine-story building that killed at least eight people in the northern city of Sumy, 40km from the border with Russia.
“And this is the answer to everyone who tried to achieve something with Putin through talks, phone calls, hugs and appeasement,” Zelenskiy said.
The comment appeared to be a dig at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who on Friday spoke with Putin in the first such call with a sitting head of a major Western power in nearly two years.
News of Biden’s decision followed meetings over the past two days with the leaders of South Korea, Japan and China.
The addition of North Korean troops was central to the talks, which took place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.
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