Moscow on Thursday attacked “hothead” U.S. lawmakers after mounting calls, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson, for Ukraine to be allowed to fire donated American weaponry into Russia.
Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, on Wednesday told journalists that it was “not a good policy” that U.S. weapons donated to Ukraine should not be used on Russian territory.
“We know that among U.S. Senators and Congressmen there are very many hotheads who consider it their duty to keep pouring oil on the fire,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded in a video posted by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.
Peskov condemned this as “an absolutely irresponsible position” that could be “dangerous in its consequences.”
He reiterated Moscow’s position that international weapon supplies will not alter the result of the conflict, vowing that Russia will continue fighting “until the moment when it has reached all its set aims.”
“I think we need to allow Ukraine to prosecute the war in the way they see fit,” Johnson told journalists in Washington after calls to end U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy that American weapons should not be fired into Russia.
“They need to be able to fight back. And I think us trying to micromanage the effort there is not a good policy for us.”
Ukraine regularly launches strikes across the border into Russia, particularly into the Belgorod region, a tactic it views as fair retaliation for attacks on its soil.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said his army launched an offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region this month to create a buffer zone that would protect his country’s border villages from Ukrainian attacks.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while visiting Kyiv last week said: “We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said during a visit to Ukraine this month that Kyiv “absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia.”
