Western nations are stepping up their calls to allow attacks on Russian territory using weapons that they have sent the Ukrainian military — an issue that is taking on greater urgency as Russia builds up troops on the border in preparation for a possible offensive.
On Monday, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, made up of lawmakers from countries belonging to the military alliance, adopted a declaration urging NATO members to lift a ban on firing Western weapons into Russia. That came after similar calls by NATO’s top official, Jens Stoltenberg, and government ministers in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden.
Ukrainian officials say that Russia has amassed some 10,000 troops across from the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, in preparation for a possible ground offensive, and that their hands will be tied unless they can strike across the border.
“Why can’t we use weapons to destroy them where they are massing?” President Volodymyr Zelensky asked in an interview with The New York Times last week. “This would also help because they wouldn’t be united in a single operation. They would know that if they accumulate at a particular point, we will strike.”
The calls to allow Ukraine to expand its use of the Western weapons are mostly directed at the United States, the largest supplier of arms to the Ukrainian government. Washington has repeatedly asked Ukraine not to fire U.S.-made weapons into Russian territory for fear of escalating the war, although a debate has now opened within the Biden administration over relaxing the ban.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia warned Tuesday that Western countries helping Ukraine strike into Russia should be aware of “what they’re playing with.” He added that small European countries calling for direct strikes on Russia should bear in mind that they are densely populated, making what appeared to be a threat against them.
Ukraine has complained in recent months that the ban allows Russian forces to launch attacks from inside Russian territory without risk and hampers its ability to repel them. That disadvantage became clear this month when Russia started a new offensive near the city of Kharkiv, just south of the Sumy region, after amassing troops and equipment just across the border.
“We had information from our intelligence services about Russia accumulating troops on the other side of the border but we couldn’t strike them to prevent this offensive,” Yehor Cherniev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s national security committee, said in a phone interview. “We had to wait for when they crossed the border.” He added: “It cost us a lot of lives.”
For now, the Ukrainian military has limited itself to using Western weapons to hit targets in Russian-occupied territory within Ukraine. Russian officials said on Tuesday that the Russian-held city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine had been attacked twice overnight, with explosions rocking the city and fires breaking out.
Artem Lysohor, the head of the Ukrainian military administration for the Luhansk region, said that Ukraine was behind the attack. He made the statement in a social media post that included a video showing a large orange blaze raging on the horizon at night, saying that the attack had targeted an aircraft repair plant.
His claim could not be independently verified and it was unclear what kind of weapon had been involved. But Luhansk is more than 50 miles behind Russian lines, a distance that Ukraine could strike with its arsenal of mid- to long-range Western missiles. Military experts and think tanks said Ukraine struck a Russian military training ground near Luhansk this month, probably with U.S.-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles.
Ukrainian officials say such strikes inside Russia would allow them to degrade Moscow’s ability to mount military operations. Kyiv has used its fleet of homemade long-range drones to target airfields and energy infrastructure in Russia, but it does not produce the kind of powerful missiles or long-range artillery that could pound important military complexes.
Latvia’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, told CNN on Monday that Russia’s recent gains in the northeast were “the consequence of our inability to provide Ukraine with weapons” and restrictions on using “those weapons to strike military targets in Russia.”
Latvia is one of several countries in Europe that have recently called to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons against Russian territory. Going a step further, Britain and Sweden, which joined NATO just two months ago, have suggested that Ukraine could use their weapons to strike inside Russia. Britain has sent Kyiv powerful long-range Storm Shadow missiles and Sweden has provided it with several self-propelled artillery systems.
Mr. Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, said on Tuesday that each country that sent weapons to Ukraine could decide individually whether to limit their use, and that it was not up to NATO to say which Western arms could strike within Russia’s sovereign territory.
Ukraine’s right to defend itself “includes also striking targets outside Ukraine, legitimate targets inside Russia,” Mr. Stoltenberg said ahead of a meeting with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels.
Some lawmakers in the United States and France, whose governments have often been careful not to escalate the fight with Russia, have written to their leaders in recent days asking them to lift the ban on using Western weapons.
On Monday, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander in chief, welcomed in a social media post “France’s initiative to send instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian military personnel,” saying he had already signed documents that would facilitate their arrival. Ukraine’s defense ministry later clarified that no decision had been made and that the Ukrainian and French governments were “still in discussion” over the issue.
In his comments Tuesday, Mr. Putin also accused Western nations of already having instructors in the country under the guise of mercenaries helping Kyiv’s troops use long-range weapons.
Faced with Russia’s advances on the Ukrainian battlefield, a number of countries have increased their military support for Ukraine in recent months. Mr. Zelensky traveled to Spain on Monday and then Belgium on Tuesday to sign bilateral security agreements.
The agreements are among a string of such commitments to Ukraine over the past year from more than 30 countries. They are meant to provide Kyiv with sufficient security assistance to deter further Russian aggression, including deliveries of key weapons, training of troops and intelligence sharing.
As part of the agreements, both Spain and Belgium said they would allocate one billion euros, about $1.1 billion, of military aid to Ukraine this year.
Belgium also pledged on Tuesday to give Kyiv 30 F-16 fighter jets over the next four years. Ukrainian officials have said the jets could allow Ukraine to shoot down the warplanes that Russia uses to launch powerful glide bombs from inside Russia.
Mr. Zelensky repeated his call to get “the permission” to strike inside Russia during a news conference in Brussels after signing the security agreement. But asked by a journalist whether Ukraine could use the F-16 jets to down planes in Russian airspace, Alexander De Croo, the Belgian prime minister, said they should “be used on the Ukrainian territory.”
Lara Jakes and Paul Sonne contributed reporting.
