State Dept Pressed On Ukraine Restrictions: Why Would US Not Allow Ukraine ‘To Hit Back In Russia?’

State Dept Pressed On Ukraine Restrictions: Why Would US Not Allow Ukraine ‘To Hit Back In Russia?’

Al thank you man two topics Ukraine there reports of Ukrainian leaders left um walked away frustrated uh the summit after the US refused you know the latest request u in terms of you know launching uh American using American strikes American weapons to strike inside Russia why would the United States not allow them to hit back inside Russia they believe that striking those launches would help them save lives in the first place so first of all I don’t know what reports you’re uh referring to but I can I will say that we had incredibly productive discussions with president zalinski and with other members of the Ukrainian government when they were here last week for the Washington Summit and as part of those discussions we talked about uh NATO’s irreversible path to Nato and the I’m sorry uh Ukraine’s irreversible path to Nato and the progress that they are making along that path we talked about the delivery of f-16s to Ukraine which is underway um we talked about the fact that we are providing them additional air defense systems something that president zilinsky had specifically asked for and that we were able to do both from our own stocks and from marshalling AR the Coalition that we have assembled all around the world with respect to the the the the question the president actually got this question his press conference last week and spoke to it quite directly um we have allowed uh Ukraine to use americanmade weapons American provided weapons to strike just across the border where they are taking incoming fire um from from Russia but we have uh decided at this point not to expand beyond that but that said you just look at the actions I outlined a moment ago that we took last week and add those to the actions we have taken for the past two plus years to support the defense of Ukraine and I think the suggestion that we are somehow not committed to Ukraine’s defense is in every way bed by the actual facts and our actual record president was Austin that he’s uh responsible about the capabilities to strike on Moscow that’s not what we’re talking about the question is why not allowing them to to strike launch sites we have decided that that is not uh an appropriate step for the United States to take now at this time but that doesn’t change the fact that we have provided with Ukraine with significant capabilities to launch attacks against the Russian troops that are uh uh that continue their aggression against Ukraine that we have provided them with the ability to strike across the border and of course that we have provided them significant air defenses which really is what we’re talking about here when you have this this question about strikes inside Russia a lot of it relates to Russia’s ability to launch assaults that then you know missiles and uh other weapons that drones and other things that then land inside Ukraine so we have provided them with air defenses to help Propel those attacks and that’s what we’ll continue to do thank you my second topic on

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about the United States restricting Ukraine from hitting Russian military targets inside Russia with US weapon systems.

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