Debris covered a street and firefighters rushed to rescue people from an apartment block hit by a Russian missile early Friday in Kharkiv, just hours after a change in U.S. policy that will allow Ukraine to defend itself against such attacks. attacking targets in Russia with weapons provided by the United States. Arsenal.
The change is limited in scope and gives Ukraine permission to use US air defense systems, guided rockets and artillery to fire on Russia only along Ukraine’s northeastern border, near Kharkiv. Fighting has raged in the area for the past three weeks after Russian troops crossed the border to open a new front in the war.
But attacking targets with American weapons inside Russia had been a red line drawn by the Biden administration because of concerns about escalation before cross-border fighting began near Kharkiv. Russia has been launching missiles and gathering forces in the safety of its own territory, out of reach of Soviet-era Ukrainian weaponry.
The attacks have prompted urgent calls from Ukraine for the Biden administration to remove the shackles, framing the use of Western weapons as a purely defensive tactic. In fact, in granting the permit, U.S. officials said the weapons should only be used for self-defense in the border region.
Still, it was a significant shift that Ukraine hopes will help it regain its footing in a war that Russia now dominates, and it was also a historic moment for the United States: It appeared to be the first time an American president had allowed limited use of weapons. Americans to attack within the borders of a nuclear-armed adversary.
There was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials about the policy change. It is unclear how much of the U.S. weapons package approved by Congress last month has reached northern Ukraine, or how soon Ukraine could use it.
Ukrainian military officials welcomed the decision and said their hands would be free to fight the Russians along the border with new supplies of powerful and accurate U.S.-provided weapons already in Ukraine’s arsenal.
This arsenal includes US guided howitzers and rockets. France and Britain have provided Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles.
“Do the Ukrainian defense forces know from where the occupier attacks Kharkiv?” said Colonel Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force officer, referring to missile launch sites across the border with Russia. “Obviously, yes,” he said in a text message, noting that Ukraine had so far been unable to fight back.
Russian officials have been proclaiming all week that NATO countries risked escalation if they gave Ukraine greater freedom to fire on Russia. On Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin warned that “this endless escalation can have serious consequences.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, said Friday that “we know nothing” about the Biden Administration’s policy change. “What we know,” Peskov said, “is that there have already been attempts to attack Russian territory using American-made weapons. “That is enough for us and shows the extent to which the United States is involved in this conflict.”
Ukrainian officials had said allowing the use of Western weaponry could help turn the tide of fighting along the border and defend against attacks on the city of Kharkiv, whose center is just 24 miles from Russia, by attacking launchers of missiles and aircraft inside Russia. territory.
Officials from Britain, France, Poland and Sweden had already expressed support for using their country’s weapons to attack inside Russia before the Biden administration changed its stance, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: had spoken out in favor of allowing Ukraine to use weapons. of alliance members to attack targets inside Russia.
The attack on the city on Friday is the type of attack that Ukraine has cited in urging the United States to change its policy.
“Unfortunately, a multi-story apartment building was hit,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in a statement after the early morning missile attack, relaying the latest in almost daily messages about explosions and casualties in the city. .
Terekhov said that a fire had broken out. A few minutes after the first missile hit, another hit the same location in a tactic known as double tap that is intended to target emergency services.
The attack killed three people and injured 23, according to local press reports that cited regional governor Serhiy Synehubov. Among the wounded, he said, were a police officer and a doctor who rushed to the scene after the first missile detonated. He said a Russian S-300 missile, an obsolete type of air defense missile that Russia has repurposed to attack ground targets, had hit the apartment building.
Ukraine has been attacking targets deeper into Russian territory with a local fleet of long-range explosive drones. The American weapons would help the Ukrainian military in the ground fight north of Kharkiv and the Ukrainian air defense forces defend the city, Ukrainian officials said before the announcement in Washington.
For the residents of Kharkiv, the shelling is a threat that overshadows most aspects of their lives.
The short trajectories of bombs and missiles mean that civilians receive little, or sometimes no, warning, leaving people with no choice but to sleep and go about their days knowing that they could be hit by a missile at any moment.
“Everything was instantaneous,” said Andriy Kolenchuk, production manager of the printing house affected on May 23. Explosions were heard, lights went out and debris fell from the ceiling, he said. Dust and smoke swirled and “everyone was running covered in blood.”
Russian bombs and missiles hit the city, Ukraine’s second largest, with a current population of around one million, often several times a day. In one of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks, a missile attack on a hardware hypermarket on May 25 killed 19 people, according to Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko.
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kharkiv and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.