In the weeks before Russian forces poured across the lightly defended Kharkiv-Belgorod frontier at 5 a.m. on May 10, Ukrainian intelligence analysts watched haplessly as drone video and foreign intelligence reports showed Russian units moving into assembly areas, supply depots stocking up, and myriad other indicators of a large-scale impending Russian attack. They could see the build-up but were unable to hit Russian units and equipment with tube artillery or rockets because of a US policy that prohibits the use of US-manufactured weapons outside of the territory of Ukraine. 

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This, along with some other key factors, allowed Russian forces to advance up to four miles to take back some villages liberated by the Ukrainian offensive in the autumn of 2022.

“The main problem right now is the White House policy to limit our capability” to strike military targets inside Russia, David Arakhamia, chair of the ruling Servant of the People party in the Ukrainian parliament, said during a visit to Washington on Tuesday.

Russia is well aware of this limitation and was able to mass at least 30,000 troops and equipment on the border without fear of being hit by long-range U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, which Ukraine has used to devastating effect on Russian troops inside Ukraine.

“We saw their military sitting one or two kilometers from the border inside Russia and there was nothing we could do about that,” Oleksandra Ustinova, the head of Ukraine’s special parliamentary commission on arms and munitions, said in a separate interview.

Russia has since clawed back ground Ukraine took last year during its counteroffensive, which pushed Russian forces back across the border.

The parliamentarians are part of a larger group of Ukrainian lawmakers meeting with around a dozen congressional offices this week to attempt to enlist them in their push to get the White House to change course.

Two U.S. officials, when asked for comment, confirmed that the Biden administration’s policy has not changed. “The assistance is for the defense and not for offensive operations in Russian territory,” said one of the officials, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

One wonders why the officials could not speak on the record because the Pentagon has announced the policy in public briefings. Even though Secretary of State Antony Blinken tries to pretend the White House has tied Ukraine's hands, no one else in Washington is pretending that's the case. 

On Wednesday, Blinken gave one answer to the question on Wednesday while in Kiev.

QUESTION:  Thanks very much to both of you.  Secretary Blinken, the Biden administration has made clear it doesn’t want Ukraine using U.S. equipment to strike onto Russian territory.  The situation in Kharkiv right on the border is pretty dramatic right now, and it seems like your restrictions are making it very hard for Ukraine to respond to the Russian attacks, since a lot of them are coming from Russian territory.  Does that ban make sense right now and are you considering relaxing it?  ...

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  ...We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war, a war it’s conducting in defense of its freedom, of its sovereignty, of its territorial integrity.  And we will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment that it needs to succeed, that it needs to win. 

Thursday, the Pentagon had a different answer.

Despite what Sec. Blinken said in Kyiv, the Pentagon says that the US-provided weapons should be used on the battlefield within UKR territory (Blinken said the US doesn't encourage strikes in Russia but it's up to UKR.) I asked whether this was a request or a binding condition. pic.twitter.com/t8RrC5oTvO

— Ostap Yarysh (@OstapYarysh) May 17, 2024

Q: I have a couple on Ukraine, and then one on Niger. So, we've heard a number of times from the U.S. officials that U.S. does not want Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with American weapons. In the wake of Russian offense and attacks on Kharkiv, does U.S. consider changing that approach? Because that's what Ukrainians are asking for. It's very difficult for them to respond to these attacks that come literally from across the border when Russians know that they can basically be saved there.

MS. SINGH: Yes, we haven't changed our position. We believe that the equipment, the capabilities that we are giving Ukraine, that other countries are giving to Ukraine should be used to take back Ukrainian sovereign territory.

Q: Just a clarification, is this a request to Ukrainians or this is a binding condition that goes along with that?

MS. SINGH: We've made our requests pretty public on this. Again, I would reiterate that, in every single Ukraine defense contact group that the Secretary convenes, the weapons that are provided, again, it's for use on the battlefield. And the Secretary, in his conversations with Minister Umerov, talks through how best those capabilities can be used, and we believe that is within Ukrainian territory.

If any of this sounds familiar, you need to think back to the Vietnam War and our policy of allowing the North Vietnamese Army to have "sanctuaries" in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. For most (maybe all) of that conflict, North Vietnamese Air Force fighters could not be attacked on the ground; they only became legal targets when airborne.

Though Ukraine is clearly able to use domestic weapons against targets in Russia, drones have their limitations. Because of US policy, Ukraine had to sit on its hands and wait for the Russians to cross the border rather than destroy units and equipment before they entered combat. I'm sure plausible arguments can be made that the White House and Pentagon are merely making recommendations, but there is no doubt that the Ukrainians are treating these recommendations as firm guidance, and the Russians are reacting accordingly.

The Russians are “smart now,” Ustinova said, “because they know there is a restriction for Ukrainians to shoot at the Russian territory. And we saw all of their military equipment sitting one or two kilometers from the border [near Kharkiv] and there was nothing we could do.”

Since the one time Ukraine used US anti-aircraft missiles over Russian territory disjointed many noses in Washington, Ukraine has allowed Russia to launch glide bombs at Kharkiv and Ukrainian Army positions for the last five months with impunity.

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Ukraine sent a delegation of five members of parliament to Washington this week to try to convince the White House and Congress that the current policy needs to change. But it seems to be an uphill battle for the moment.

But during a media roundtable event in Washington, the Ukrainian lawmakers expressed palpable frustration that the U.S. is still against the policy. 

“It’s like if somebody were to attack Washington, D.C., from the Virginia state, and you say we’re not going to hit Virginia for some reason,” said David Arahamiya, head of a Ukrainian parliamentary group on U.S. relations and the lawmaker who led the delegation this week.

The UK removed its restrictive policy earlier in May. “Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it’s defending itself,” said British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

If the policy of the US is to bring this war to a conclusion, then the policy is an extremely stupid one. It allows Russia to strike Ukrainian population centers with impunity so long as the attack comes from Russian territory as recognized by the civilized world. Russia can mass troops and weapons on Ukraine's border at any point, and Ukraine is forbidden to attack them preemptively. They must let Russia strike first. If Biden's purpose is to drag the war out ad infinitum to maximize damage, slaughter, and political instability, then it makes sense. I'm not posing that alternative facetiously; as we saw during COVID, Biden and his appointees were willing to kill as many Americans as it took to impose policy preferences. There is no reason to think they hold Russian or Ukrainian lives in higher regard.

More disturbing is that we're seeing the return of Robert S. McNamara's Whiz Kids to policy making, only this time, we are using unqualified midwits and lackwits from the bowels of the Democratic foreign policy intelligentsia instead of legitimately smart people. They are trying to play cute "non-escalation" games that might be amusing in the faculty lounge after a few hits of some good Lebanese hash but which kill and cripple men, women, and children in Ukraine. Retreating to the establishment of sanctuaries where the Russians can train and stage operations is bizarre because we know that policy doesn't encourage negotiations; it encourages recalcitrance.

If we are serious about ending this war on terms acceptable to Ukraine and to our NATO allies, and that should be our only concern, then  Russian forces and equipment must be put at risk inside Russian territory, and if it requires the use of American munitions to do that, then that's what we need to do.