Outgoing United States President Joe Biden will allow Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike inside Russia, various news outlets, including Reuters, the Associated Press and the New York Times, have reported.
Three sources, familiar with the matter, including two US officials, told Reuters on Sunday that Ukraine plans to carry out long-range attacks using the weapons in the coming days.
As France and the UK weigh up whether to follow America’s decision on missiles, one Ukrainian MP has urged the countries to go a step further and put boots on the ground.
“I think the next discussion should be about sending troops to Ukraine,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, the MP for Odesa, told Newsday.
United Russia MP, Maria Butina, tells the BBC that the US is using Ukraine and, in the process, further deepening the conflict with Russia.
The world doesn’t need “another escalation,” she adds, “another step to the, potentially, the third world war.”
“And while the United States is playing their little games in politics, they are actually pushing the world to a very dangerous red line,” Butina says.
She adds that it’s an attempt to “escalate as much as possible so Trump is not able to keep the promise to stop the war.”
Donald Trump has yet to offer his thoughts on Joe Biden’s change of heart. A key question, of course, is whether the President-elect would reverse the decision once he enters office on 20 January next year.
Trump has a history of praising Vladimir Putin and has been a vocal critic about the level of US aid going to Kyiv. He’s also claimed he’d end the war in a day without explaining how.
Credit: aljazeera.com
