WASHINGTON – A Ukrainian defense insider ripped the Harris-Biden administration Friday, saying it had abetted a Russian glide-bomb attack that killed six people – including a child on a playground – in the city of Kharkiv by refusing to allow Kyiv to launch US-provided weapons into Russia.
The White House has time and time again waited months to assist Ukraine with long-requested weapons and other materiel to combat Moscow’s invasion –– from tanks and missile systems to F-16 jets –– only to reverse course after hundreds of lives have been lost.
“The Western powers inadvertently are assisting Russia in the killing of the Ukrainian children,” the insider exclusively told The Post. “I won’t go as far as to say that they’re killing our children, but they are accomplices to these war crimes because they facilitate these war crimes – they make these crimes possible.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, echoed the comment in a post on X Friday morning, writing that the Kharkiv attack “could have been prevented if our Defense Forces had the capability to destroy Russian military aircraft at their bases. We need strong decisions from our partners to stop this terror.
“This is an absolutely legitimate need,” Zelensky added. “There is no rational reason to limit Ukraine’s defense. We need long-range capabilities and the full implementation of air defense agreements for Ukraine. These are life-saving measures.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov arrived at the Pentagon Friday to advocate lifting restrictions on firing long-range ATACMS missiles into Russian territory.
Umerov and other Ukrainian leaders are reportedly presenting Washington with a list of key targets inside Russia that Kyiv aims to strike if given the Harris-Biden administration’s OK.
While the details of any proposed targets are highly confidential, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) this week revealed 250 Russian military bases and assets that are reachable with US-provided ATACMS missiles if Ukraine is given the authority to use them.
The ISW list includes at least 12 Russian air bases – including some that can be used to launch aircraft that deploy glide bombs like those used in the Kharkiv attack, which also injured at least 55 civilians.
It also includes other targets – such as weapons storage and ammunition depots – that could be hit to cripple Russia’s latest offensive on Pokrovsk, a town of 60,000 at the convergence of several highways whose seizure would be a devastating blow to Kyiv on its southern front, ISW’s Russia team lead George Barros told The Post.
By restricting the Ukrainians from firing long-range weapons into Russia itself, Barros said the Harris-Biden administration has effectively created a “magic shield” for Moscow to safely position military assets near the Ukrainian border without needing to fully defend them.
“Military infrastructure that’s on the immediate opposite end of the international border in Russia is so close to Pokrovsk,” Barros told The Post. “And because it’s protected by the US policy, it gives the Russians this quantitative advantage of being able to amass a whole bunch of stuff on the other side of the border and essentially surge it through that last 150 or so kilometers of terrain [in Ukraine] to get to Pokrovsk.”
Institute for the Study of War
While Kyiv would rather have the go-ahead to fire weapons at their discretion, a Ukrainian official told The Post that they would be glad to work with the Pentagon target-by-target if it meant they would be allowed to strike at the heart of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military.
“From a purely logical point of view, that could probably be a very simple safeguard and kind of another way to allay the fears of the Pentagon,” the official said.
In fact, Kyiv is familiar with having to go cap-in-hand to the Defense Department to request permission about how to use the US weapons, The Post has learned.
When the Harris-Biden administration pulled one of its many policy reversals and provided Ukraine with HIMARS rocket systems, Kyiv’s defense leaders were required to take explicit orders from the US about what could be targeted, a source said.
“Every shot that we would fire would be sort of consulted with enormous control by the US,” this person revealed.
“So if this is the way forward, if we [can’t] just … have discretion as to how to use them; if we need to actually sit down with our American partners and determine like, ‘these will be the targets’ [for ATACMS] – I mean, from where I’m standing, fine, let’s do it. Let’s do something, right? Better than doing nothing.“
Still, it remains unclear whether the Pentagon will be willing to allow strikes on Russian territory.
Neither the US nor Ukraine governments have gone on record to confirm the discussions, other than to note Umerov’s Friday meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
