EU defense ministers were yesterday debating whether to allow Ukraine to strike targets deeper inside Russian territory with weapons that have been sent by member states.
“I truly hope that all the countries that have these assets will also give permission to Ukraine,” Estonian Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur told reporters, adding that Ukraine was already striking targets in Russian territory with its own drones.
“It cannot be normal that Russians are attacking from very deep into Ukrainian territory and Ukrainians are fighting with one hand behind their back,” Pevkur said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Up to now, the US and Germany in particular have been cautious about sending weapons to Ukraine that would have the range to strike targets inside Russia because of the risk of a broader conflict.
After months of pleading from Ukraine, the US earlier this year sent long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for use inside occupied territory.
Ukraine is struggling to defend the Kharkiv region from Russian air attacks, given its proximity to the border. Kyiv’s allies are shoring up efforts to send Ukraine more air defense assets, but striking targets inside Russia, where its attacks originate from, could help mitigate the cost of defending Ukrainian cities with expensive missiles to counter Russia’s significant supply of cheap bombs.
A Russian strike on a home-improvement superstore in Kharkiv on a busy shopping day last weekend killed at least 18 people and wounded several dozen.
Two days earlier, a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s largest publishing house, killing at least seven. Both attacks were launched from Russia’s Belgorod region, the Ukrainian military said.
Belgium yesterday pledged to deliver 30 F-16 jets to Ukraine by 2028, with the first expected to arrive this year.
“The weapons we deliver, as clearly stated in the agreement we signed, are meant to be used by the Ukrainian defense forces on Ukrainian territory,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo told reporters.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Belgium to sign a security cooperation pact, and was set to visit Portugal later yesterday.
Zelenskiy hailed the deal with Belgium, saying in a post on X that the country is also delivering at least 977 million euros (US$1.06 billion) in military aid this year.
“We can’t, it’s a fact, risk the support from our partners, so we aren’t using the partners’ weapons against Russian territory,” he told a news conference in Brussels, adding that he was asking his allies to allow retaliatory strikes in Russia.
On Monday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg doubled down on his push to urge allies to lift restrictions on hitting targets in Russia.
“When we have delivered weapons to Ukraine it’s actually not ours anymore, it’s the Ukrainians’ and they have the right to self defense, including hitting legitimate military targets outside Ukraine and in Russia,” Stoltenberg told the NATO parliamentary assembly in Bulgaria.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said such a move is acceptable under international law, because Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine are originating inside Russian territory.
“The risk of escalation I’m sure will be put on the table by some, but you have to balance the risk of escalation and the need for Ukraine to defend” itself, he added, saying the current situation was “completely asymmetric.”
Defense ministers from Latvia and the Netherlands also expressed support for the idea.
Germany, meanwhile, is still holding back its Taurus system, citing concerns about the possibility for escalation and the need for German soldiers to operate the systems on the ground due to its unusually long range of more than 500km.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s chief spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, told reporters on Monday that a state under attack can generally defend itself with strikes against targets also outside its own borders. because this is in line with international law.
“And then it is always a question of the proportionality of the attack in question,” Hebestreit added.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS