For months, Mykhail and his comrade Aleksander felt the West forced Ukraine to fight with one arm tied behind its back.
Restrictions against using Western-supplied weapons inside Russia have meant Ukrainian forces could see Moscow’s forces massing, or preparing attacks, but have been unable to respond.
“If Russians are using their weapons in our territory, then it should be fair: we should be able to strike their territory,” argued Aleksander, of the Ukraine army’s 71st Jaeger Brigade, who declined to give his full name.
“It doesn’t mean we are going to use the weapons against civilian targets, just military targets.”
His comrade, a former miner from Lviv who has twice been concussed by shellfire in more than two years at the front, said: “It used to be not fair. Our reconnaissance tells us the coordinates of where the Russian targets are, and yet we were not able to hit them.”
In conversations with The Telegraph on Tuesday, troops from the Vovchansk front north-east of Kharkiv were unanimous that Joe Biden had now made the correct decision, albeit belatedly, to give Ukraine limited permission to use US weapons to strike inside Russia.
Kyiv, which is heavily outgunned and increasingly outnumbered on the battlefield, had pleaded with Washington to allow it to strike targets on Russian soil with US-made weapons.
Soldiers fighting for Vovchansk, which has been largely destroyed by Russia’s renewed assault on the Kharkiv region three weeks ago, said Ukrainian commanders knew where key targets across the border were located. But they had been unable to strike them.
As Russian troops pushed into the region in May, Ukraine was unable to break up troop concentrations, or conduct effective counter-battery fire because the attack came from across the border.
Hitting supply chains, air bases, artillery and troop build-ups would badly hamper Russia’s attempts to push deeper into Kharkiv, troops predicted.
“The main thing we need to do is to break their logistics chains,” said Aleksander.
The front line opinion was on Tuesday echoed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.
Andriy Yermak said the policy change would help push back Russian advances, fend off air attacks, and better defend territory in the Kharkiv region.
He said: “Permission to use Western weapons on the territory of the Russian Federation is a vital decision.
“This will impact the conduct of the war, planning of counter-offensive actions, and will weaken Russians’ abilities to use their forces in the border areas.”
Mr Biden last week bowed to pressure to relax restrictions that US officials had until then considered necessary to prevent America and Nato being dragged into wider conflict with Russia.
A growing number of European countries, including Britain and France, had already given Kyiv permission to use Western missiles against Russian military targets before they had crossed the border.
Jens Stoltenberg, the head of Nato, also put rare diplomatic pressure on the White House declaring that “in light of how this war has evolved the time has come to consider some of these restrictions, to enable the Ukrainians to really defend themselves”.
US officials later said Mr Biden had allowed US weapons for “counter-fire purposes in Kharkiv so Ukraine can hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them”.
It has since been reported that Ukraine has launched attacks using US-supplied Himars rocket batteries to hit targets inside Russia.
On Sunday, rockets reportedly destroyed an air defence installation in the Russian city of Belgorod equipped with S-300/400 surface-to-air missiles.
The Kremlin later warned Washington it could suffer “fatal consequences” for backing the cross-border attacks.
“A last we will be able to move them back a bit,” one infantry soldier told The Telegraph.
“Maybe it will give us some breathing space. It’s been very frustrating.”
Another said: “Yes, we have to be able to strike them. We didn’t invade them, they invaded us.”
Troops described difficult conditions at the front. They said while ammunition had started to reach their lines after a lengthy political hold-up to US supplies, Ukraine’s forces were still heavily outgunned.
‘We need to kill Russians’
“If we use 10 shells, they send 50 back,” said one artillery gunner.
“Even if we receive the shells, our artillery barrels are old and worn out.”
Allowing strikes inside Russia would help he predicted, though he said cross-border strikes would probably be a tiny proportion of Ukraine’s overall targeting.
He said: “Of course, they should give us this option. We will not use it against civilians, we will use it against military targets.
“We need to kill Russians so they don’t come here.”
Vovchansk has been largely destroyed since the start of the May 10 offensive.
Up to 80 per cent of the town’s buildings are reported to have been damaged.
Troops said the front line had stabilised in recent days and Ukrainian commanders have estimated they still control 70 per cent of the town.
Troops still face the threat of Russian artillery superiority and glide bombs which can be launched by Russian jets from well beyond range of Ukraine’s air defences.
Mykhail said ammunition shortages had eased with the unblocking of US supplies.
He said: “Of course, it was very painful at the end of 2023. Now we can use artillery. It’s not possible to fight just using infantry.
“If our allies also continue supplying more, then we can save more Ukrainian lives.”
The cost of more than two years of Russia’s invasion is clear at Kharkiv’s No 18 cemetery. One section contains around 1,200 new graves covered by a sea of national and military flags.
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Ukraine soldiers agree it is right to be able to strike on Russian soil - The Telegraph
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