Important Takeaways:
- Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, will meet with US officials “to try to concretely convince the White House to lift restrictions on long-range weapons strikes on Russian territory,” the lawmaker said.
- “They will provide a list of priority targets, without which it will be difficult to change the course of the war in Ukraine’s favor.”
- Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky once again called for allowing Ukraine to carry out strikes deeper inside Russia and “lifting the restrictions on long-range strikes for Ukraine now,” arguing it would end the war sooner “for Ukraine and the world as a whole.”
- “We consider strikes deep into Russian territory with American weapons no more provocative than strikes with American weapons on Russian territory near the border,” the Ukrainian lawmaker told CNN. “Both are Russian territory and it makes no difference how deep the targets are.”
- The Ukrainian seizure of Russian land in Kursk earlier this month injected a fresh wrinkle of uncertainty in what had become a grinding war of attrition with only small incremental gains apparently possible for either side.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, two U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said Thursday, a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.
- In the last few days, the U.S. made the decision to allow Ukraine “flexibility” to defend itself from attacks on the border near Kharkiv, the second U.S. official said.
- In effect, Ukraine can now use American-provided weapons, such as rockets and rocket launchers, to shoot down launched Russian missiles heading toward Kharkiv, at troops massing just over the Russian border near the city, or Russian bombers launching bombs toward Ukrainian territory. But the official said Ukraine cannot use those weapons to hit civilian infrastructure or launch long-range missiles, such as the Army Tactical Missile System, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.
- Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who supports a restriction lift, became the first U.S. official to publicly hint that Biden may shift course and allow such strikes, telling reporters that U.S. policy toward Ukraine would evolve as needed. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby later did not rule out a potential change.
- Those messages came after top U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom and France, said Ukraine should have the right to attack inside Russia using Western weapons. Lawmakers from both parties also supported the move publicly and privately, while top U.S. military officials briefed Congress behind closed doors that relaxing the restriction had “military value,” POLITICO first reported.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. Weapons from Afghanistan Ended up with Palestinian Groups Operating in the Gaza Strip
- According to a Newsweek report published in June, an Israeli commander said some of the US small arms seized in Afghanistan have already been observed in the hands of Palestinian groups operating in the Gaza Strip.
- The report began recirculating on social media, amid accusations that the Biden administration funded Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel by releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, the main backer of Hamas.
- Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Saturday:
- The $6 billion has not been accessed completely by Iran yet, but the fact of the matter is if you have a credit on your account for $6 billion, typically, people count that as access available today, tomorrow, whenever, so you start reworking your spending budget.
- And by doing so, you put yourself in a position to use that money even though you have not had access to it yet. So the $6 billion that they know they’re getting, they’re using already.
- Newsweek also reported that another source disclosed a specific event on August 20 where a Russian Il-76 transport aircraft allegedly dropped off cargo in Tehran worth an estimated $100 million, which included Western weapons such as U.S.-made Javelins and United Kingdom-made Next Generation Light Anti-armor weapons (NLAWs).
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