“Despite all my respect for every country and, of course, for our partners in Ireland – we need permission to use long-range weapons precisely from those countries that give us this long-range weapon, it depends on them,” Zelenskyy said.
He stressed that this does not depend on a coalition of all friendly partners – it depends on “very specific states”: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
“Today, only these four countries either provide or are capable of providing the long-range weapons that can help us push the Russian Federation out of our territory and save the lives of civilians,” the president said.
Ukraine has drawn up a list of targets they would strike with the US weapons. And they have so far been using the US weapons only to strike targets allowed by the US. Even when it has been clearly against Ukrainian interests. I’d say that they can be trusted to only go after the targets they say. Ukraine cannot afford to lose western support.
I think what is preventing the US and allies from allowing strikes on deep Russian targets is the same as it ever was. The fear of escalation. And what they are trying to do is to slowly cook the frog. Small incremental increases in allowances.