U. S. Shifts Policy For Striking inside Russia For Self Defense

 

By Andrew E. Kramer

Reporting from Kharkiv, Ukraine

The New York Times

Debris covered a street and firefighters rushed to rescue people from an apartment block hit by a Russian missile early Friday in the northeastern city of Kharkiv. A fire broke out, and a few minutes after the first missile hit, another struck the same location in a tactic known as a double tap that is intended to target emergency responders.

It was just the type of attack Ukraine has cited as it appealed to allies to allow it to do more to defend itself against Russian bombardment. That consent finally came in a major way on Thursday when the U.S. amended its policy, saying Ukraine could defend itself by hitting military targets in Russia with American-provided weaponry.

The shift is narrow in scope, granting Ukraine permission to use American air defense systems, guided rockets, and artillery to fire into Russia only along Ukraine’s northeastern border, near Kharkiv. Fighting has been raging in the area for the past three weeks after Russian troops poured over the border to open a new front in the war.

But hitting targets with American weapons inside Russia had been a red line drawn by the Biden administration because of worries about escalation before the cross-border fighting began near Kharkiv. Russia has been launching missiles and gathering forces in the safety of its own territory, out of range of Ukraine’s Soviet-era weaponry. 

The assaults have prompted urgent appeals from Ukraine for the Biden administration to remove the shackles, framing the use of Western weapons as a purely defensive tactic. Indeed, in granting permission, U.S. officials said the weapons should only be used in self-defense in the border region.

Still, it was a significant reversal that Ukraine hopes will help it regain its footing in a war that Russia is now dominating, and was a historic moment for the U.S. as well: It appeared to be the first time an American president had allowed the limited use of American weapons to strike inside the borders of a nuclear-armed adversary.

At a news conference in Sweden, President Volodymyr Zelensky called the decision “a step forward” to the goal of defending “our people who live in the villages through the borderline.”

A soldier stands in a wooded area beside a mobile rocket launcher covered in camouflage netting.

A Ukrainian soldier with a mobile rocket launcher in eastern Ukraine in March.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

There was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials on the policy shift. It is unclear how much of the American weapons package approved by Congress last month has arrived in northern Ukraine, or how soon Ukraine might be able to use it.

Ukrainian military officers welcomed the decision, saying their hands would be unbound to fight the Russians along the border with new supplies of powerful and precise American-provided weapons already in Ukraine’s arsenal.

This arsenal includes howitzers and guided rockets from the United States. France and Britain have provided Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles.

“Do the Ukrainian defense forces know from where the occupier is attacking Kharkiv?” said Col. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force officer, referring to the launch sites of missiles across the border in Russia. “Obviously, we do,” he said in a text message, noting that until now Ukraine had been unable to strike back.

Russian officials have been proclaiming all week that NATO countries were risking escalation if they provided Ukraine greater freedom to shoot into Russia. On Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin warned that “this unending escalation can lead to serious consequences.”

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said on Friday that “we don’t know anything” about the Biden Administration’s change in policy. “What we know,” Mr. Peskov said, “is there have already been attempts to hit Russian territory using American-made weapons. That is enough to us, and it proves the extent to which the U.S. is involved in this conflict.”

Ukrainian officials had said allowing the use of Western weaponry could help turn the tide of the fighting along the border and defend against attacks on the city of Kharkiv, whose city center is just 24 miles from Russia, by hitting missile launchers and airplanes inside Russian territory.

Officials in Britain, France, Poland, and Sweden had already voiced support for the use of their country’s weapons to strike inside Russia before the Biden administration shifted its stance, and NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, had spoken in favor of allowing Ukraine to use weapons from members of the alliance to strike targets inside Russia.

The strike on the city Friday underscored the vulnerability that had fueled Kyiv’s frustration with Western hesitation.

“Unfortunately, a multistory apartment building was hit,” Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said in a statement after the early morning missile strike, conveying the latest in near-daily messages about explosions and casualties in the city.

In a nighttime image, a woman in a bathrobe checks her phone in front of a damaged car and a pile of rubble.

A resident outside of the apartment block in Kharkiv was hit on Friday.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

The strike killed three people and wounded 23, according to local news reports that cited the regional governor, Serhiy Synehubov. The wounded, he said, included a police officer and medic who had rushed to the site after the first missile detonated. He said a Russian S-300 missile, an outdated type of air defense missile Russia has repurposed for attacking ground targets, had hit the apartment building. 

Ukraine has been striking targets deeper in Russian territory with a homegrown fleet of long-range exploding drones. The American weapons would help Ukraine’s army in the ground fighting north of Kharkiv and Ukraine’s air defense forces in defending the city, Ukrainian officials said before the announcement in Washington.

For residents of Kharkiv, the bombardments are a menace overshadowing most aspects of their lives.

The short trajectories of the bombs and missiles mean civilians have little warning, or sometimes none at all, leaving people with no choice but to sleep and go about their days knowing that they could be hit by a missile at any time.

“It was all instantaneous,” said Andriy Kolenchuk, a production manager at the printing company hit on May 23. Explosions rang out, the lights blinked off and debris fell from the ceiling, he said. Dust and smoke swirled about and “everybody was running around covered in blood.”

Russian bombs and missiles streak into the city, Ukraine’s second largest with a population now of about one million, often several times a day. In one of the highest-casualty attacks in recent weeks, a missile strike on a hardware superstore on May 25 killed 19 people, according to Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klimenko. 

Also on Friday, Russia and Ukraine announced a mutual release of 75 prisoners from each country, the first such exchange since February and a rare example of dialogue between the warring nations. “We remember everyone. We make every effort to find each and everyone,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on social media.

Direct communications between Moscow and Kyiv have been infrequent since the early days of the war, but the two sides have regularly exchanged prisoners of war through deals often brokered by third parties such as the U.A.E. or Turkey.

Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said on Friday that there had been 52 exchanges in total, including Friday’s, with 3,210 Ukrainians returned. Russia has not disclosed the total number.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kharkiv, Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014. More about Andrew E. Kramer