Ukraine would have military reason for striking deeper into Russia – NATO committee chief

PRAGUE (Reuters) – Ukraine would have a good military reason to strike deeper into Russia using Western weapons, a senior NATO military official said on Saturday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday as Ukraine’s allies discuss whether to give a go-ahead for Kyiv to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia.

President Vladimir Putin has said the West would be directly fighting Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike with Western-made long-range missiles.

At a meeting in Prague of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Military Committee – the alliance’s highest military authority – its chairman Admiral Rob Bauer said the law on armed conflict gave a nation the right to defend itself and that did not stop at its border.

At the same time, he said, nations providing weapons also had a right to place limitations on their use.

He said: “In military terms, you do (those attacks) because you want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer.

“So, militarily, there is a good reason to do that; to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistics lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front.”

The other side of the discussion was political, he said, as nations supplying weapons may feel responsible for them, and those political talks continue.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been asking allies to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles, including long-range U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadows, deep into Russian territory to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks.

Putin said on Thursday the actual programming of the missiles’ flight paths would have to be done by NATO military personnel, because Kyiv did not have the capabilities itself.

(Reporting by Jason Hovet)