The Ukrainians rose this August 24, the day they commemorate the independence of their country, with a news that could be surprised. The newspaper The Wall Street Journal confirmed on the eve that, if the course of the war is followed, was evident: the Pentagon has banned kyiv in this 2025 to use its missiles to hit Russian soil. Nothing very new under the sun of the war in Ukraine: neither Donald Trump nor his predecessor in the presidency of the US, Joe Biden, have so far wanted to provoke Russia with their weapons. , and that exception is over. “No one can ban these attacks because they are justice,” said the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine used at least three times, on Russian soil: American precision rockets Atacms and British-French cruise missiles Storm Shadow gave in the target in the neighboring provinces to Ukraine of Kursk, Briansk and Belgorod. Storm Shadow also require Washington’s approval because the target coordinates are provided by the Pentagon.
Biden had given his approval in November 2024 to the use of this armament in Russian territory, with the condition that it was limited to containment operations in the vicinity of Ukraine. But the former president of the former president reached the end of his mandate and after two years of negatives to kyiv’s demands. And in no case the Biden administration accepted deep attacks in Russian territory. In fact, the Secretary of State of the Biden era regretted in public on several occasions that Ukrainian drones, because that altered the price of international crude and because they are civil infrastructure.
It is not surprising that Trump, conciliatory with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has now reversed that punctual authorization. The Wall Street Journal It informs that the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is the one who has the last word in each attack that Ukraine wants to perform with the Atacms.
In his message to the nation to commemorate Ukraine’s independence day, Zelenski has expanded in the need to hit Russia thousands of kilometers from its borders. “No one can ban these attacks because they are justice,” he said. “Ukraine does not wait for [que haya] Gestures of goodwill, it has its own will to carry out what is necessary for us. ”
An example that Ukraine will not ask permission, as Zelenski points out, is the announcement this week of the start of the production of his first cruise missile ,.
Zelenski has referred to several actions of his armed forces: the 2024 raid in the Russian province of Kursk (an operation that a year later is practically finished after the Russian progress); the almost daily bombings against refineries and distribution centers of Russian oil, the main source of income of the invading state; And, on June 1, of a hundred small drones, hidden in containers, which were activated thousands of kilometers and bombarded several aerodromes of the enemy.
Trump and his team criticized the operating spider web because they considered it an unnecessary climbing tension with Russia at a time when the US leader had open the communication line with Putin to agree on the end of the war.
Something similar happened this week with the three attacks taken. kyiv’s drones have damaged several points of this channeling that transports oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, sent a protest letter against Ukraine to Trump, and he replied with another written message, which was filtered to Hungarian media close to Orban: “Viktor, I don’t like what you tell me, I am very angry, say it to Slovakia.” The governments of Hungary and Slovakia are the two allies that Kremlin has in the European Union.
“When the enemy hits our energy infrastructure, trying to leave us without light or heating, then it is his refineries that caught fire,” Zelenski reiterated. The truth is that Russia has been avoiding bombarding the power and production centrals of Ukraine since last March. The Ukrainian electrical system had been a priority objective of the invader since the late 2022, leaving millions of people without basic services. But both contestants suspended the attacks against their energy industry in March 2022.
Ukraine has started this August, to limit the main source of income of the State that feeds the arms production. On August 10 there was a record: for the first time the Ukrainian bomb drones impacted against a refinery of the Russian state company Lukoil to more than 2,000 kilometers from its borders.
Attack at St. Petersburg
On the eve of the Independence Day of Ukraine, at dawn from Saturday to Sunday, St. Petersburg has seen the arrival of Ukrainian bomb drones. The presence of these unmanned devices has caused the closure of airspace and the cancellation of dozens of flights. Also this summer has been a strategy of Ukraine forcing the closure of airports. For kyiv it is a priority that the Russian population also feels the effects of the invasion.
In the case of this morning bombing, one of the main objectives in the province of Leningrad, where St. Petersburg is located, has been a natural gas terminal in the port of UST-Luga, in the Baltic Sea.
Trump asked Zelenki precisely why Ukraine did not put more pressure on Russia by hitting Moscow and St. Petersburg. The US president was misunderstood, as explained by the White House, because at first it was believed that he was encouraging kyiv to attack the two great Russian cities. Zelenski replied that they could do it if the US gives them weapons for it. With the new Flamingo missile, American assistance can be unnecessary.
The US president has meant during his seven months of mandate for his will to understand himself with Putin and for his criticism of Zelenski, but also for showing sudden changes of opinion. On August 21, in one of his messages on social networks, Trump charged Biden because he did not give weapons to Ukraine “to counterattack, just to defend himself”: “It is very difficult, if not impossible, win a war without being able to attack the invader. It is like a great team in sport, which has a fantastic defense but which is not allowed to play the offensive. Thus there are no options to win,” he wrote.
While it is true that the US with Biden and NATO gave limited support to Ukraine to defend themselves, it is also true that Trump has cut the armament supply for kyiv, and only now begins to provide military assistance, of the Atlantic Alliance.
