The statement came after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky renewed his demands that all restrictions on Western hardware be lifted.
The limitations were put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, yet still send Kyiv billions of dollars worth of arms, ammunition, equipment, and cash, RT reported.
“Our policy has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Major-General Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday, explaining that Ukraine is allowed to use US-supplied weapons to defend from cross-border attacks but not for “deep strikes” into Russian territory.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also told reporters on Monday that there were “no changes” to the policy about the restrictions.
The US has already relaxed its policy from the initial set of restrictions, which only allowed Kyiv to strike Russian territory Ukraine claimed as its own – from Crimea to Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Zelensky claimed these restrictions hampered his military in countering the Russian operation north of Kharkiv in May and demanded that they be lifted entirely. Washington responded by allowing “counterfires” against Russian forces across the border. In practice, Ukrainian forces have used their US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers to strike towns, bridges, and roads instead.
His chief of staff Andrey Yermak and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov are scheduled to visit Washington later this week and present a list of targets Kiev wishes to strike, Politico reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. Yermak was behind the initial push to relax the restrictions in May.
China, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia are “worried that the West will continue to relax the conditions for using supplied weapons to attack Russia’s homeland,” Beijing’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, said on Tuesday.
The current US government drew the line on deep strikes into Russia after one of its ATACMS rockets armed with a cluster warhead struck a Crimean beach in early June. Moscow blamed Washington for the carnage and suggested it might arm “states and entities” around the world hostile to the US in response.
SD/