A Ukrainian commander operating near the Russian border described how his unit watched as Russia amassed a huge force but had to wait for the troops to cross the border to hit them.
“There were a lot of Russians gathering, and we could have destroyed them on the way in, but we don’t have many ATACMS, and we have a ban on using them over there,” he told The Times of London.
Drago, a special forces commander with Ukraine’s Kraken detachment, was redeployed, along with his unit and other special forces troops, in April from the eastern Donbas region to Kharkiv to strengthen Ukraine’s forces there, per the Times.
But instead of hitting the Russians, he and his unit were forced to watch as the troops gathered on their side of the border, according to the outlet.
“We had to wait for them to cross,” he said, referring to a US policy that bans Ukrainian forces from using US-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
Since the start of the war, the US and other Western countries have supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars of weaponry, but have long drawn the line on it using them against Russia itself, fearful of escalating the conflict.
The Pentagon and US Army officials have repeatedly stated US opposition to Ukraine using the weapons it has supplied to strike targets on Russian soil.
But the rule cost Drago’s unit “dearly,” he told the Times, with Russian troops then encircling 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 six-person crew found itself divided into two groups and quickly encircled, pinned down in a system of trenches with two dugouts, each holding three soldiers.
Drago ultimately called in artillery fire that left at least three Russian soldiers dead, and the Russians retreated, he told the outlet.
According to Drago, “none of this would have happened if we could use ATACMS.”
Ukrainian officials have echoed Drago’s remarks about fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.
Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, told the Financial Times this week that the US should lift its “absolutely unfair” ban on Ukraine using its weapons to strike targets in Russia, so that it can stop its new offensive in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, told The New York Times that Ukraine’s inability to fire US-supplied missiles or weaponry at military targets inside Russia gave the Kremlin a “huge advantage” in cross-border warfare.
Ukraine is negotiating with Western partners to lift such bans, but talks have yielded “nothing positive” so far, Zelenskyy told Reuters on Monday.
