Rulers in NATO countries, along with Ukraine and United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken are reportedly pushing head tyrant Joe Biden to loosen the restrictions on Ukraine that have for more than two years limited its use of Western weapons to within occupied Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told The New York Times last week that the constraints have given Moscow a “huge advantage.”
The West is emboldened right now because Russia has, luckily, failed to follow through when its red lines are crossed. “We have weapons, but we cannot use them against Russia until they cross the border,” Yehor Cherniev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the deputy head of its national security, defense and intelligence committee, told Newsweek.
“We had information before the latest Russian offensive near Kharkiv, about them assembling their troops, about their equipment, but we couldn’t do anything,” Cherniev added. “We couldn’t strike, and that’s why we couldn’t prevent this attack. That’s why we lost some villages, some territories, and we lost our soldiers and civilians. This is ridiculous.”
So far, Russian rulers have been “warning” and repeating rhetoric without any sort of follow-through. NATO and The West have remained largely unscathed for their participation in this war. But will that last?
Ukraine is currently gathering approval from other NATO states to use their provided arms against targets inside Russia. Nations including the United Kingdom, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Finland, and Poland have expressed their backing for Kyiv to attack Russian targets wherever it chooses.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday he believes it is time to reevaluate the arms restrictions placed on Ukraine. “The time has come to consider some of these restrictions,” and European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said that some European nations have already decided to lift restrictions. “Events are changing and people are changing,” Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
