{"id":133837,"date":"2025-05-26T17:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133837\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T17:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:52:08","slug":"germanys-merz-says-ukraine-can-use-western-long-range-weapons-on-targets-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133837\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Merz Says Ukraine Can Use Western Long-Range Weapons on Targets in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine\u2019s Western allies are no longer imposing any range restrictions on the use of weapons delivered to Ukraine against Russian military targets,\u00a0German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said <\/a>Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no longer any range restrictions for weapons supplied to Ukraine, neither from the British, the French, us or the Americans,\u201d Merz told the broadcaster WDR.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that Ukraine can now defend itself, including, for example, by attacking military positions in Russia, which it couldn\u2019t do up to a certain point,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s Western allies had initially restricted the use of long-range missiles to targets within Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation. But the United States and Britain authorized strikes on Russian soil last November after North Korean troops were sent to support Russian forces in the Kursk region, which Ukrainian troops had attacked in August.<\/p>\n

President Vladimir Putin condemned that decision at the time, warning that it would mean NATO is\u00a0\u201cat war with Russia.\u201d\u00a0He responded by broadening Russia\u2019s nuclear doctrine, authorizing the use of nuclear weapons in response to large-scale conventional attacks or attacks by non-nuclear states backed by nuclear powers.<\/p>\n

Besides the U.S. and the U.K., France also supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine. Merz previously signaled that he would overturn the ban of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, on sending German-made Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

France has not confirmed whether it has given Ukraine the go-ahead to use weapons it has supplied for use in strikes against targets on Russian territory.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin said<\/a> later on Monday that the decision to allow more long-range strikes with Western weapons threatened to derail direct peace negotiations that began with Ukraine earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf such decisions were indeed made, they potentially run counter to our efforts toward a political resolution,\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s lower-house State Duma Defense Committee chairman Andrei Kartapolov described<\/a> Merz\u2019s latest comments as a reaction to Ukraine\u2019s \u201chowling and crying to save them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nothing new for us, we\u2019ve been foreseeing this possibility for a long time and are ready for it,\u201d he told Kremlin pool reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re successfully carrying out the special military operation and Ukraine is currently losing,\u201d Kartapolov said, using the Kremlin\u2019s preferred term for Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Western allies are no longer imposing any range restrictions on the use of weapons delivered to Ukraine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,753],"class_list":{"0":"post-133837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-ukraine-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114575412119874885","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}