Inside the White House, a Debate Over Letting Ukraine Shoot U.S. Weapons Into Russia
After a sobering trip to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is urging the president to lift some restrictions on how Ukraine can use American arms. | Since the first American shipments of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, President Biden has never wavered on one prohibition: President Volodymyr Zelensky had to agree to never fire them into Russian territory, insisting that would violate Mr. Biden’s mandate to “avoid World War III.” ● But the consensus around that policy is fraying. Propelled by the State Department, there is now a vigorous debate inside the administration over relaxing the ban to allow the Ukrainians to hit missile and artillery launch sites just over the border in Russia — targets that Mr. Zelensky says have enabled Moscow’s recent territorial gains.
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