The first U.S. weapons attacks by Ukraine on Russian territory could begin in a matter of hours or days, the New York Times (NYT) reported, citing U.S. officials.
According to the NYT, the administration of US President Joe Biden has agreed on the possibility of US weapons strikes on Russian territory in the course of counter-battery warfare, the decision came into effect on Thursday, 30 May.
The newspaper noted that the decision to revise the US weapons policy was linked to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s trip to Kiev in mid-May, but negotiations on the matter had been going on for weeks.
“U.S. officials now say they expect the first counterattacks using U.S. weapons to begin, expected within hours or days,” the publication said.
According to the publication’s sources, Anthony Blinken met with Biden and the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on 17 May after returning from Kiev and told them that he had come to believe that the US position on banning strikes on Russian targets with American weapons should be changed. NYT claims that Biden first allowed the cancellation of restrictions on 15 May, and the final decision after “reviewing all the risks” was made last week.
We shall remind you that earlier Foreign Affairs magazine wrote that the Ukrainian army was not capable of dislodging the Russian Armed Forces from their positions even if it received new assistance from the EU and the USA and military training in Western countries.