A Ukrainian commander operating near the Russian border described how his unit watched as Russia assembled a huge force but had to wait until troops crossed the border to strike them.
“There were a lot of Russians gathered and we could have destroyed them on the way, but we don’t have many ATACMS and we have a ban on using them there,” he told The Times of London .
Drago, special forces commander of the Ukrainian Kraken detachment, was redeployed, along with his unit and other special forces troops, in April from the eastern Donbass region to Kharkiv to reinforce Ukrainian forces there, according to the Times.
But instead of striking the Russians, he and his unit were forced to watch as troops gathered on their side of the border, according to the outlet.
“We had to wait for them to cross,” he said, referring to U.S. policy barring Ukrainian forces from using U.S.-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia.
Since the start of the war, the United States and other Western countries have supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars in weapons, but have long banned their use against Russia itself, fearing an escalation of the conflict.
Pentagon and U.S. military officials have repeatedly stated U.S. opposition to Ukraine using the weapons it supplied to strike targets on Russian soil.
But the rule cost Drago’s unit “dearly”, he told The Times, with Russian troops then surrounding them and attacking them from the rear.
On May 10, Russian forces ambushed a nearby position occupied by another unit and ambushed Drago’s group from behind, the outlet reported.
Drago’s crew of six found themselves split into two groups and quickly surrounded, trapped in a trench system with two dugouts, each containing three soldiers.
Drago eventually unleashed artillery fire that left at least three Russian soldiers dead, and the Russians withdrew, he told the outlet.
According to Drago, “none of this would have happened if we had been able to use ATACMS.”
Ukrainian officials echoed Drago’s remarks that they were fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Ukraine’s secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told the Financial Times this week that the United States should lift its “absolutely unfair” ban on Ukraine using its weapons to strike targets in Russia, so that she can stop her new offensive in Russia. Kharkov.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the New York Times that Ukraine’s inability to fire missiles or US-supplied weapons at military targets in Russia gave the Kremlin a “huge advantage” in cross-border warfare.
Ukraine is negotiating with its Western partners to lift the bans, but the negotiations have yielded “nothing positive” so far, Zelensky told Reuters on Monday.
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