‘NO SUCH RESTRICTIONS’

Ukraine Won’t Rule Out Striking Russian Forces in Crimea With U.S. Weapons

Ukraine promised the U.S. that it wouldn’t use American-supplied weapons to hit Russia, but that doesn’t apply to occupied territories, the defense minister says.

Ukraine’s defense minister says the country won’t rule out striking Russian forces in Crimea with U.S.-supplied weapons. In an interview with Voice of America’s Ukrainian service, Oleksii Reznikov stressed that Ukrainian officials had promised their U.S. allies they wouldn’t unleash any strikes on Russian territory using weapons provided by the U.S. “But if we are talking today about the de-occupation of temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine where the enemy is, then, correspondingly, we have no such restrictions,” Reznikov said. His comments come after a series of blasts in occupied Crimea sent people fleeing from the Russian-controlled peninsula in recent days, amid growing speculation that Ukraine may launch an offensive to take back the land stolen by Vladimir Putin’s forces back in 2014. Though Ukraine has not officially taken credit for the explosions, officials have cryptically hinted at involvement. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said in an interview with The Guardian that there will likely be “more incidents of this kind” in Crimea over the next few months, and named the Kerch Strait Bridge that links the peninsula to Russia as a target that “should be destroyed.”