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Almaty Hotel Cancels Deal To Host Kazakh Group Opposing Nuclear Plant [1]
["Rfe Rl'S Kazakh Service"]
Date: 2024-09-13 15:54:02+00:00
U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are set to meet amid signs they are growing more receptive to loosening restrictions on Ukraine’s use of donated long-range weapons, as Moscow issued stern warnings against granting Kyiv the capability to strike deeper into Russian territory.
The contentious issue is expected to be a main topic of discussion when Biden and Starmer meet in Washington on September 13, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a tour of Europe in which he heard repeated appeals from Ukraine and its allies to lift the restrictions.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
Biden in May altered U.S. policy to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-donated missiles into Russia to defend itself against a major Russian offensive that included missile and drone barrages fired from Russian territory. But Biden maintained a limit on the distance the U.S. missiles could strike, meaning Ukraine could only hit targets in regions close to the border.
The Guardian newspaper, quoting government sources, reported on September 12 that London had already given Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow missile for strikes deep into Russian territory. Other British media, however, reported that the United Kingdom might require Washington's permission first because the weaponry contains U.S.-made components.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 12 warned against any change in policy that would allow Western weapons to be used for long-range strikes on his country's territory, saying it would mean that the NATO alliance of which the United States and Britain are members, would be "at war" with Russia.
"If that's the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will make the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face," Putin said.
Putin claimed that the Ukrainian military would only be able to carry out such strikes when using data from NATO satellites and that only military personnel of NATO "can carry out flight tasks for these missile systems."
On September 13, the chairman of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, accused NATO of already being party to the all-out war that began with Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Without providing evidence, Vyacheslav Volodin accused NATO of helping Ukraine determine strategies, choosing Russian targets, and even of giving Kyiv orders.
"The United States, Germany, Britain, and France are discussing the possibility of strikes (by Ukraine) using long-range weapons on the territory of our country," Volodin wrote on Telegram. "This is nothing but an attempt to camouflage and conceal their direct participation in military action."
"In fact, the United States and its allies are actually trying to give themselves permission to carry out acts of aggression with missiles against Russia," claimed Volodin, a close Putin ally.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has recently ramped up his calls for Kyiv's Western partners to loosen restrictions on donated weapons. Zelenskiy has argued that longer-range capability is needed to allow Ukraine to better defend itself against attacks as Russia has moved its long-range weaponry beyond Ukraine's reach.
Russia has also made significant territorial gains on the ground in Ukraine's east amid an ongoing offensive. It has also begun a counterattack to retake Russian territory overrun by Ukraine following a surprise incursion into Russia, the first since World War II.
Zelenskiy said on September 13 that the counterattack in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine took more than 1,300 square kilometers of territory in the space of a few weeks, was expected but had so far seen “no serious success.”
The Ukrainian president also said at a conference in Kyiv that the situation around the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which Russian forces aim to capture as they advance in the Donetsk region, remained difficult but was stabilizing.
Zelenskiy said that he plans to present a “victory plan” to end the war with Russia to Biden later this month.
"[It] can pave the way for a reliable peace -- for the full implementation of the peace formula," he said at a conference organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation charity.
In recent weeks, Zelenskiy has said that Ukraine has no intention of holding the Russian territory it controls as a result of the incursion launched in August. However, he said it gave Ukraine leverage for future negotiations and that captured Russian soldiers were valuable in exchanges for Ukrainian troops captured by Russia.
He announced on September 13 that the release of 49 more Ukrainian POWs had been secured in a swap for an undisclosed number of Russian soldiers. It was the second such exchange since the Ukrainian incursion into Russia, with the first involving 115 prisoners from each side on August 24.
During the conference, Zelenskiy said Ukraine needed the full support from its allies in order to be in a strong position to negotiate with Russia, and repeated his calls for the West to help Ukraine carry out long-range strikes into Russia.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Germany that using U.S. weapons for long-range strikes in Russia was no game-changer for Ukraine and said that Russia had already been forced to move its glide bombs beyond the reach of U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems.
Austin also noted that Ukraine itself had significant capabilities to attack targets well beyond the range of the British Storm Shadow cruise missile.
But on the last day of Blinken's European tour in Poland on September 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the U.S. secretary of state that Ukraine needed better capabilities to defend itself because Moscow "is committing war crimes by attacking civilian targets."
“Missiles that hit these civilian targets are fired from bomber aircraft from over the territory of Russia. These bombers take off from airfields on Russia’s territory," Sikorski said. "A victim of aggression has the right to defend itself."
Other European leaders have made similar comments.
Blinken said at a news conference in Warsaw that "as what Russia's doing has changed, as the battlefield has changed, we've adapted," reiterating comments he made on September 11 in Kyiv.
He said one the purposes of his visit to Ukraine was "to hear from our Ukrainian partners what they believe they need now to deal with the current battlefield, including in eastern Ukraine and other parts of the country," Blinken said.
"I can tell you that as we go forward we will do exactly what we have already done, which is we will adjust as necessary...in order to defend against Russian aggression," Blinken said.
With reporting by Reuters
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