Senior Ukrainian officials to present Biden admin with list of targets in Russia this week, lawmaker says

By Jennifer Hansler, Oren Liebermann, Katie Bo Lillis and Kayla Tausche, CNN

(CNN) — Two top Ukrainian officials will present the Biden administration with a list of targets in Russia in face-to-face meetings this week, in an attempt to push the US to lift restrictions on the use of American weapons against Moscow, a Ukrainian lawmaker told CNN.

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.”

Umerov will meet Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday, US officials told CNN. It’s unclear who Yermak will meet. In previous visits to Washington, he has met Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Politico first reported that a list will be presented.

On Wednesday, 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.”

Ukraine is making a concerted push to pressure the US ahead of the presidential election in November with Kiev concerned that a victory for former President Donald Trump could mean the US would withdraw support its war effort.

The visit comes after Ukraine launched a surprise offensive into Russian territory earlier this month. The operation in the Kursk region has so far been limited to a box the US drew in Russia to which the use of American weaponry would be limited, even as one US official acknowledged earlier this month the offensive was “not what we had in mind.”

Kyiv has repeatedly pushed to use American and Western weapons to strike targets deeper in Russia, especially as the Russian military has moved its high value assets, such as military aircraft and control nodes, farther from the front lines.

‘No difference how deep the targets are’

“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.”

Instead, Ukraine has used its long-range US weapons, such as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), to take out advanced Russian air defenses inside occupied Crimea.

Previously, the US has allowed Ukraine to use American weaponry to strike Russian forces near the border as Kyiv defended itself against cross-border attacks. Russia launched a new offensive in the Kharkiv region in May, but after seizing some new territory, Ukraine was able to slow advancing Russian forces, particularly as the Biden administrated eased some restrictions on the use of US weapons.

But the Biden administration has refused to allow Ukraine to use US weapons for long-range strikes deep into Russian territory.

“You’ve heard us say that the Ukrainians can use US security assistance to defend themselves from cross-border attacks, in other words counter-fire,” said Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder on Tuesday. “But as it relates to long-range strike, deep strikes into Russia, our policy has not changed.”

A senior US official told CNN the Biden administration welcomes the engagement as it works to get a better understanding of Ukraine’s strategy and how the incursion could change the nature of the conflict. Given Ukraine’s difficulty recruiting and training soldiers, the US had expected that such a move would not have been possible for Zelensky to carry out until the spring.

Zelensky said publicly at a conference in Ukraine that the incursion is the first step of a multi-phase effort described as a “powerful package of forcing Russia to end the war in a diplomatic way,” according to a translation of his remarks. Zelensky referenced a broader vision for an endgame – and plans to reveal that vision in September to Biden, Harris and, possibly Trump – an approach that also seemed to take the White House by surprise.

“We need to hear from him directly,” a senior US official told CNN. “He was in public discussing the terms of an endgame … that’s the type of (private) conversation that would be helpful to have.”

Biden last spoke to Zelensky on August 23 – and released a new tranche of military aid – in the leadup to Ukraine’s Independence Day.

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.

Putin facing difficult decisions

While US officials expect that Russian President Vladimir Putin will eventually mount a counteroffensive to retake Kursk, the “expectation is that that will be a difficult fight for the Russians,” CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said on Wednesday.

That may force Russia to make some difficult decisions about where it allocates troops that could create manpower challenges for him along the frontline in Ukraine – even as Ukraine may have to contend with precisely the same issue in order to hold Kursk, as it now appears committed to doing for at least a period of time.

One US military official in the region said that Russia will likely need a three-to-one ratio to eject the Ukrainians, a critical mass of forces that will likely take Moscow at least three weeks to put together.

Multiple US and western officials told CNN that there is no sense that the Ukrainian offensive crossed any kind of “red line” for the Russian president that might cause him to take dramatic action outside of the bounds of convention warfighting, like using a tactical nuke, for example.

Still, although its impact is yet unknown, the fight for Kursk could have a potentially significant impact on the overall strategic outcome of the war, Cohen and others said.

Putin “is not only going to have to face the fact that there is a front line now within Russian territory that he’s going to have to deal with,” Cohen said. “He has to deal with reverberations back in his own society that they have lost a piece of Russian territory.”

Recent analysis from the open-source intelligence firm Filter Labs found that sentiment on Russia social media towards Putin has been “deteriorating” since the Ukrainian seizure of Kursk.

But longtime Russia watchers point out that Putin has faced popularity hits before in the face of significant “embarrassments” – the Ukrainian sinking of the Moskva, or Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, for example – and he has not been forced or persuaded to change course in Ukraine.

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