U.K. lifts restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons against Russia

KYIV — British Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced that Britain has given Ukraine permission to strike targets on Russian territory with the weapons in a new $3 billion multiyear aid package it is providing.

Cameron’s remarks — in an interview with Reuters during a visit to Ukraine — mark a sharp reversal in the position of one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters.

Kyiv’s Western allies, including the United States, have so far forbidden Ukrainian forces from to use Western-supplied arms to target locations within Russia, for fear of escalation and possibly being drawn further into the conflict. Ukraine has used its own weapons systems, such as long-range self-destructing drones, to strike critical infrastructure deep inside Russia.

On Thursday, Cameron said some of the military equipment provided by Britain was “actually arriving in Ukraine today, while I’m here.” He said Ukrainian officials would decide whether to target Russian territory.

“Ukraine has that right,” he told Reuters. “Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it’s defending itself.”

U.K. lifts restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weapons against Russia

However, Cameron did not indicate when Britain made this decision or whether Ukrainian forces have started to target Russian installations with British weapons.

The military equipment “would include the provision of precision-guided bombs, and air defence missiles and equipment for 100 mobile air defence teams to enable Ukraine to shoot down Russia’s drones and missiles,” a statement on British government’s website said.

Ukrainian officials declined to comment on Cameron’s remarks.

These comments — along with French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks in February that Paris did not rule out sending troops to Ukraine — amount to “a direct escalation of tensions around the Ukraine conflict that may be potentially dangerous for European security and the entire European security architecture,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

On Friday, Cameron released a video, recorded in front of St. Michael’s Golden Domed Monastery in central Kyiv, in which he said Britain had been the first country to sign an agreement giving security guarantees to Ukraine and that now it was the first to provide the country with an annual $3.75 billion aid package.

The aid was for “not just this year and next year, but for as many years as Ukraine needs it,” Cameron said.

The money is needed to “push back” Russian President Vladimir Putin, so that there will be a “just peace” and Ukraine “recovers its sovereignty,” Cameron said. This is not just an investment in Ukraine’s security, “but the best possible investment” that Britain could make in its own security and prosperity, he said.

“There is an alternative scenario where we don’t back Ukraine sufficiently, where Putin scores a win here in Ukraine,” Cameron said. “We’ll be living in a far more unsafe and uncertain and dangerous world that will cost us in so many ways.”

Macron, who raised eyebrows with his comments in February about sending troops to Ukraine, made remarks similar to Cameron’s and reinforced the idea of foreign forces in Ukraine in an interview with the Economist published Thursday.

Macron said the question would arise if Russia broke through front lines and Kyiv made an appeal. “I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,’’ he told the magazine.

“If the Russians penetrate the front lines, if there is a Ukrainian request — which is not the case today — we should legitimately ask ourselves the question,” he said. Asked if he believes allies could end up sharing his view, Macron said they may all have to confront this possibility “if Russia decided to go further,” threatening security in Europe.

Above all, he said, it is a matter of “credibility and deterrence” to say to Russia: “Don’t think that we will stop here if you don’t stop.”

Stern reported from Mukachevo, Ukraine. Ellen Francis in Paris contributed to this report.