Europe

Ukraine wants the EU to use its influence to convince Washington to lift restrictions on its use of Western weapons on Russian territory, as Kyiv seeks to build on its battlefield gains and fend off a new wave of attacks, APA reports citing Politico.

The EU "can and should play a role in persuading the United States to make this decision happen,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told POLITICO in an interview ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels Thursday.

Ukraine has been pleading with allies to allow its troops to deploy Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, as it faces a new assaults on its cities and energy infrastructure while continuing to make advances in its incursion into Russia's Kursk.

Allies, and particularly the United States, are resisting, arguing such a move could be escalatory.

Kyiv needs "support to finally lift restrictions on long-range strikes on all legitimate military targets in Russia,” Kuleba said. “Of course this decision lies mainly with the United States and the U.K., but France is also a party and part of the EU.”

Today’s meeting in Brussels, which will be dominated by the war in Ukraine, takes place as Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, and Andriy Yermak, senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, travel to D.C. to argue that restrictions on the use of Western weapons should be lifted.

As well as the risk of escalation, the Biden administration has more recently been stressing its belief that there is little tactical advantage in allowing weapons to hit targets in Russia because many of the assets have been moved out of range. But POLITICO reported this week that Umerov and Yermak will, in a last-ditch effort to change minds, present a list of long-range targets in Russia they believe Kyiv’s military can hit if Washington were to lift its restrictions on U.S. weapons.

French President Emmanuel Macron previously opened the door to allowing Ukraine to strike military bases well inside Russia with Western weapons.

Kuleba said he doesn't "question the good intention" of the French president. "But the fact is that we still cannot shoot … The moment we can shoot, the moment we have enough missiles and can use them, then it will work. But as of now we are still in the process of talking, of negotiating.”

Kuleba, who will attend the EU foreign ministers' meeting to deliver his plea directly to them, will also make the case for air defense capabilities in EU countries such as Poland to be used to protect parts of Ukrainian airspace. "I don’t question the willingness of Poland to build up defensive mechanisms," he said, but "they cannot do it on their own. We need partners to support them on this." That reflects the fact that Poland’s air defense system is integrated with NATO’s.

“The argument that this would make some of them party to the war is void," Kuleba said, dismissing the idea that taking out Russian missiles in areas bordering Poland would be escalatory. "You don’t enter the war by shooting down a missile or drone that flies in your direction and may actually inflict damage on your own territory,” he said.

Kuleba also called on other NATO countries to intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine.

“We are talking about planes [not only] flying in Polish air space but being capable of intercepting Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace,” he said, noting that Zelenskyy discussed the issue with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg at the NATO summit in July. “We’ve been working on it since then through military and diplomatic channels, but it’s time to make a decision. You’ve seen just recently how bad Russian missile and drone attacks have been,” he said, referring to this week’s Russian assaults on Ukraine, which have killed dozens of people.

Kuleba is also seeking to encourage direct purchases of weapons from Ukrainian manufacturers. “After two and half years of the war we have ramped up production and built up capacity. And the most cost and time efficient ways of providing Ukraine with lethal and non-lethal weapons is to buy from our own producers,” he said.

But he cautioned that this should not be used as an excuse by the West to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine as it continues to defend itself against Russia's full-scale invasion.

“Of course every new weapon we develop ourselves makes us feel more confident. But Ukraine’s successes in developing and applying state-of-the-art weapons should not serve as an excuse for partner countries not to deliver similar weapons to Ukraine. The scale of this war and the sacrifice we’re making has proved that we can succeed only when we act together.”

Thursday's meeting of EU foreign ministers had been due to take place in Budapest, under the auspices of the Hungarian Council of the EU presidency. However, EU countries boycotted the meeting over growing unease at Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s obstruction of EU foreign policy when it comes to Ukraine, including a visit to Moscow by the Hungarian leader last month.

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