Biden maintains limit on Ukrainian strikes despite Zelensky’s push

President Biden on Thursday reaffirmed a limit on how Ukraine can use American-provided weapons to strike inside Russia, just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the restrictions “crazy.”

While the U.S. has permitted Ukraine to strike beyond the Russian border near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Biden has resisted Ukrainian demands to reach Russian targets as far as 300 miles across the border. 

“If he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn’t,” Biden said of Zelensky.

“The question is what is the best use of the weaponry he has? I got him more long-range capacity, as well as defensive capacity. I’m following the advice of my commander in chief, the chief of staff of the military as well as the secretary of defense, and my intelligence people, and we’re making a day-to-day basis on how far they should go in. That’s a logical thing to do.”

The United Kingdom announced this week that it would allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with British-provided long-range missiles, and NATO has backed Ukraine’s push for more latitude in its use of Western-supplied weapons.

But other countries like Germany have followed America’s lead and held back.

“There has been a clear decision and the American president has said it again and again, that the weapons should not be used outside Ukrainian territory,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a press conference following the NATO summit. 

“We have made a small adjustment with regard to attacks that have been started in the immediate vicinity of Kharkiv on Russian territory,” Scholz said. “It remains our task to make sure that we support Ukraine to the maximum, but that we don’t want an escalation between Russia and NATO, this requires us to be wise and to be clear.”

Zelensky pushed hard for the U.S. and allies to lift restrictions throughout the NATO summit, which focused largely on other ways NATO could ensure Ukraine’s security moving forward.

“If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the [limitations],” Zelensky said at a press conference alongside outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in Washington on Thursday.

He called it “crazy” to have limitations on how it can use donated weapons to strike against Russia. 

“We understand from what military base they attack us, and if they attacked us and killed our children in the hospital, that is crazy question why we can’t answer and attack this person, this military base, where from these guided bombs from jets, or missile came, targeted us, killed our children,” Zelensky said.

Updated on July 12 at 8:27 a.m. EDT