Targets Zelensky may destroy if he may use missiles INSIDE Russia

US and British foreign ministers met President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv yesterday in what could prove a key moment with the war between Russia and Ukraine now at a critical juncture.

Antony Blinken announced Washington would provide more than $700 million in aid, while foreign secretary David Lammy said Britain would stump up a further £600 million ($781 million) in the latest show of support for Kyiv.

There is no word yet on whether Zelensky will succeed in securing that which he really covets – a green light from the White House and Downing Street to begin launching Western-supplied long-range missiles at targets on Russian soil.

But there are rumours the long-awaited approval could soon come, with US President Joe Biden set to meet British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in Washington on Friday. 

Meanwhile, American officials are said to be finalising a plan to ease restrictions on the use of US-donated missiles by Ukraine’s Armed Forces, according to sources cited by Politico. 

If Ukraine’s Western allies lift the ban, Kyiv’s soldiers will soon be able to strike Russian military assets as deep as 300km (190 miles) inside Russia with the likes of the US ATACMS and Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles – a capability that could significantly impact the course of the conflict. 

The Institute for the Study of War, a US think-tank, last month established a list of nearly 250 high value military and paramilitary targets within range of the weapons that could be demolished by Ukraine. 

Among the main targets laid out by the ISW include as many as 16 Russian air bases, a slew of brigade and division headquarters, artillery and missile units central to Russia’s air defence capabilities, and a variety of logistics hubs supplying Vladimir Putin’s units on the frontlines. 

Targeting these sites could cripple Russian logistics, command, and combat support, significantly reducing Moscow’s offensive capabilities in occupied Ukrainian territory​ – even if Putin’s troops redeploy most strategic bombing aircraft further east. 

The Kursk nuclear power station and several nuclear weapons stockpiles also pose theoretical targets.  

Ukraine has already authored several attacks deep into Russia, including on targets in the capital Moscow, a number of oil refineries and ammunition dumps. 

But those strikes have been conducted by kamikaze drones which are considerably limited in their scale and are highly susceptible to Russian jamming and air defence systems. 

Ukraine’s Western allies recently delivered the first tranche of F-16 fighter jets, but these aircraft remain subject to restrictions and can only be used in a limited capacity, for example, to conduct air defence missions or support operations on Ukrainian soil. 

Zelensky has been pleading with Kyiv’s allies for months to take their support a step further by letting Ukraine fire Western missiles, including long-range US ATACMS and British Storm Shadows, deep into Russian territory to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks across the border.

Those weapons have already been used to great effect in Russian-occupied Ukraine and in Crimea. 

But Kyiv is yet to have delivered strikes across the Russian border with Western-supplied long-range weaponry.  

Downing Street and the White House have thus far been reluctant to authorise such strikes amid fears such a move could provoke Russia towards a direct conflict with the West.

Putin said on day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that anyone who tried to hinder or threaten it would suffer ‘consequences that you have never faced in your history’.

Since then, he has issued a series of further statements that the West regards as nuclear threats and announced the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament and a close ally of President Putin, said Moscow would be forced to use ‘more powerful and destructive weapons’ against Ukraine if Kyiv started firing long-range Western missiles at Russia.

‘Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine,’ Volodin said on Telegram.

And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this week that Moscow suspects a US decision to let Kyiv fire such missiles into Russia has already been taken, and vowed that the Kremlin would take ‘an appropriate response’ if the missile ban is lifted. 

But Ukrainian officials and pro-Ukrainian analysts have dismissed Putin’s so-called ‘red lines’ and argued that the West has already stepped beyond the limitations it had laid out earlier in the war, for example, by providing F-16s.

US Secretary of State Blinken confirmed discussions about permitting Ukraine to use long-range weaponry against Russian targets but refused to elaborate. 

‘Among other things, we discussed long-range fires, but a number of other things as well. And as I said at the outset, I’m going to take that discussion back to Washington to brief the president on what I heard,’ Blinken told reporters earlier this week. 

‘We are listening carefully and, of course, we are having discussions on a range of issues, including the military equipment that Ukraine needs to win,’ Lammy told a news conference alongside Blinken and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.

The British foreign minister suggested those discussions could continue for a few more weeks, a remark that will disappoint Ukrainians hoping the West would quickly discard fears of escalation.

But in a sign that Ukrainian efforts to persuade its backers to green-light long-range strikes were making headway, Biden last night suggested there was room for compromise. 

The US President said he was ‘working that out now’ when asked if he would lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of missiles such as ATACMS by reporters.  

He is now set to discuss the issue with Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer who today flies to Washington for his second visit to the US since being elected Prime Minister two months ago. 

More than two-and-a-half years since the invasion, Russian forces are inching forward in the east as Kyiv’s forces try to hold a pocket of land they seized in Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise incursion last month.

As if to prove its enduring military capabilities, Ukraine shocked Moscow last month by piercing its border with tens of thousands of troops that Russia is still fighting to repel. 

Zelensky said the operation made a mockery of Putin’s ‘red lines’ and used the move as yet more evidence to lobby the US and European lawmakers to grant Kyiv permission to use advanced Western weapons inside Russia.

But after making rapid progress in the first two weeks of the incursion, Ukrainian advances have stalled and on Wednesday a senior Russian commander said his forces had taken back control of about 10 settlements.

Zelensky was asked in Kyiv yesterday about the prospect of the US and UK green-lighting deeper strikes into Russia, and he quipped that it depended instead on the ‘optimism’ of Ukraine’s partners.

‘Let’s count on some strong decisions at least. For us it’s very important for today,’ he told reporters in Kyiv.

In a comment posted on his Telegram channel, Zelensky described the talks as ‘long and meaningful’.

‘All the key issues were discussed,’ he wrote.

‘What’s important is that all the Ukrainian arguments were heard. And that concerns long-range weaponry, supplying our front-line brigades and the general strategy of moving strategically towards a just peace.’