Blinken’s statement contradicts the position taken by spokespeople across the executive branch, many of whom set about correcting the secretary’s error.
During a visit to Ukraine this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted in definitive terms that the United States has placed no restrictions on Kyiv’s ability to use U.S.-provided weaponry to strike targets inside Russian territory.
“We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine. But, ultimately, Ukraine needs to make decisions for itself on how it conducts this war,” Blinken claimed. He added that the Biden administration “will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment it needs to win.”
Blinken’s assertion contradicts not only a variety of media reports indicating that the U.S. has put limits on Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian assets — in particular, its petroleum-processing facilities, the destruction of which could raise global oil prices in an election year. Indeed, the secretary’s statement is at odds with the position taken by spokespeople across the executive branch, many of whom set themselves to the task of correcting Blinken’s error.
The secretary’s comments did not reflect “a policy change,” the State Department’s Vedant Patel told reporters when asked about Blinken’s comments. “We do not encourage or enable strikes on Russian territory,” he said, echoing Blinken. When asked if there would be “consequences” should Ukraine use U.S. ordnance to strike Russian assets inside the federation, Patel declined to answer. He would not entertain “hypotheticals,” Patel insisted — an admission that State has not seen American weapons used in those strikes despite Kyiv’s entreaties.
The Pentagon is on the same page as its counterparts at Foggy Bottom. “We haven’t changed our position,” Defense Department spokeswoman Sabrina Singh assured journalists this week. “We believe that the equipment, the capabilities that we are giving Ukraine, that other countries are giving Ukraine, should be used to take back Ukrainian sovereign territory.” Asked if the Biden administration had conditioned the lethal aid it provides Ukraine on those terms, Singh said the U.S. position has been made “pretty public.” When Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in contact with his Ukrainian counterparts, Singh stressed that the secretary emphasizes his desire to see U.S. arms used “on the battlefield.”
America’s policy comes as no surprise to reporters following closely Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine and the degree to which U.S.-imposed conditions have hamstrung Ukraine’s defenders. “One of the reasons why Russia was able to mass forces and then launch a successful cross-border offensive in Kharkiv this month is that the U.S. has banned Ukraine from using American weapons to strike Russian troops until after they had crossed the border,” the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov observed.
The Institute for the Study of War reached the same conclusion. In a May 13 release, ISW analysts determined that Ukraine’s limited ability to destabilize Russia’s “rear support areas” has contributed to Moscow’s costly advances into Ukrainian territory.
“The U.S. need not greenlight the use of all US-provided military systems against any target in the Russian Federation and still lift its restrictions enough to allow Ukrainian forces to defend themselves against immediate operational assaults,” their dispatch declared.
It continued:
Neither Russia nor any other state has the right to view its sovereign territory as inviolable in a war of aggression that it has initiated. Establishing the principle that nuclear-armed states can earn such inviolability through threats of escalation encourages other such potential predators to imagine that they, too, can attack with impunity and demand sanctuary in their own territory. US restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-provided weapons were one thing when the question was of a possible long-range strike into the deep Russian rear. Preventing Ukraine from using all of the resources at its disposal against a renewed cross-border invasion makes no sense.
Indeed, U.S. policy makes “no sense” at all. Perhaps Blinken is aware that the Biden administration’s restrictions on Ukrainian activity are so craven, so nakedly observant of domestic political necessities at the expense of U.S. strategic interests abroad, that they are indefensible. If the secretary is so beset by those qualms, he would better serve the American public by resigning rather than misleading Americans about the policies set by the president he works for.