Strikes in Russia with US weapons would help Kyiv hold line, says official

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The US should lift its “absolutely unfair” ban on the Ukrainian army using American-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia, in order to help thwart Moscow’s new offensive, Ukraine’s top national security official has said.

Oleksandr Lytvynenko, the newly appointed secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, told the Financial Times “it would be beneficial” for his country if the Biden administration lifted that restriction. Washington has argued the ban was needed as a means to avoid further escalation with Moscow.

But Lytvynenko, echoing other officials in Kyiv, said that using long-range missiles and other US-supplied weaponry to strike Russian arms depots, logistics hubs and oil refineries could stymie Moscow’s renewed offensive.

Ukrainian officials have argued that Russia might not have advanced as fast in the north-eastern Kharkiv region had Ukraine been able to strike in advance. Russian forces have surged more than 10km over the border since May 10, capturing several villages and laying waste to the city of Vovchansk.

On a visit to Kyiv last week, US secretary of state Antony Blinken repeated the Biden administration’s long-held position that it does not “encourage or enable” strikes with US weapons inside Russia. But, he added, ultimately Ukraine “has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war”.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that any strikes in Russian territory would be strictly for “defence”. He told Reuters on Monday that his government was discussing the matter with Washington but the talks had produced “nothing positive”.

About 50,000 Russian soldiers were massed on the border of Kharkiv region before Putin ordered his latest offensive early this month, according to Lytvynenko. More than 30,000 Russian troops had taken part in the operation, Lytvynenko said, which was designed to “create a buffer zone” to better protect Russia’s Belgorod region from Ukrainian attacks and incursions. 

A secondary goal, he said, was to try to draw Ukrainian forces from other strategic flashpoints, particularly those in the eastern Donetsk region. 

There, Russian troops are bearing down on the strategic town of Chasiv Yar, which, if captured, would put Ukraine’s garrisons cities and critical logistical routes in Donetsk region under threat and significantly swing momentum in Moscow’s favour. 

“Our forces have done a great job stopping them,” Lytvynenko said of the Russian attacks in Kharkiv and Chasiv Yar. “What might happen in the next months, I can’t say. But right now we have stabilised the situation.”

While Putin currently “does not have enough troops” to take Kharkiv, a city of some 1.3mn, Lytvynenko did not rule out that the Russian president might attempt to capture the city in future.

Lytvynenko, 51, was appointed by Zelenskyy in late March as part of a months-long effort to reshuffle Ukraine’s top military, intelligence and national security brass in an attempt to reinvigorate the war effort. Lytvynenko previously served as Ukraine’s foreign intelligence chief.

Putin has also reshuffled his military and national security apparatus, including by appointing economist Andrei Belousov as defence minister. Those moves, Lytvynenko said, indicated that the Russian president was “preparing for a long war and a bigger war with the west, with Nato”.

“Ukraine is important but it’s not the ultimate goal,” he said. “He will not stop here.”

Lytvynenko said that besides arming Ukraine and lifting restrictions on the use of weapons to strike targets in Russia, Kyiv’s allies should strengthen their sanctions regime against Moscow.

“Western sanctions are working,” he said. “It means that Putin can’t produce the most sophisticated weaponry.” 

He said that Russia’s war economy had led to an increase of cruise and ballistic missiles and drones being produced “in big numbers”. But sanctions had meant few new technological developments, and instead a focus on the production and retrofitting of Soviet-era weaponry.

While conceding that the chances for a Ukrainian breakthrough on the battlefield this year were slim, he said, “as long as we hold the line, as long as we fight . . . we still have all chances to win”.

“Our task right now is to tip the scale.”