Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said in an Aug. 30 interview that he had submitted to senior U.S. officials a list of targets that Ukraine wants to hit with U.S.-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles in Russia.
The news came as a Ukrainian delegation arrived in Washington to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other Western officials.
Kyiv has long argued that restrictions on the use of long-range weapons are stifling its war effort, while Washington claimed that allowing Ukraine to hit deep into Russian territory with its weapons could escalate the conflict.
Ukraine has dismissed these arguments and has ramped up pressure to lift the ban in recent weeks amid the ongoing incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast. The White House has not budged on its position, despite some U.S. politicians backing Kyiv’s demands.
"We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard," Umerov told CNN.
According to the minister, the list includes airfields used by the Russian army to launch strikes against population centers across Ukraine.
The targets on the list are within the range of long-range missiles, and Kyiv insists on lifting restrictions on the use of ATACMS to protect its people and infrastructure, Umerov added.
"They’re killing our citizens. That is why we want to deter them, we want to stop them, we don’t want [to] allow their aviation to come closer to our borders to bomb the cities,” the minister said.
In June the U.S. permitted Ukraine to strike Russian military targets just across the border but maintained its ban on attacks deep inside Russia with long-range weapons like ATACMS.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine’s capture of the Russian town of Sudzha, located less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Ukraine, shows that Western fears of Russian "red lines" are groundless.
Western countries have largely allowed Ukraine to use their arms in the Kursk incursion, but the U.S. and the U.K. have maintained their restrictions on the use of long-range missiles like ATACMS or Storm Shadow.
Kateryna Hodunova
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