The U.S., U.K., France, and Germany have lifted range restrictions on weapons for Ukraine
This was announced by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine — not from the United Kingdom, not from France, not from us. And not from the Americans either,” he said.
This means that Ukraine can defend itself, he noted, “for example, by striking military positions in Russia.”
Kremlin-aligned war correspondent Kots claimed that the Ukrainian Armed Forces may soon receive the long-range air-to-surface cruise missile Taurus, capable of hitting targets up to 500 kilometers away.
“A fighter armed with a Taurus could reach, for instance, Tula or Kaluga from Kharkiv Oblast. A serious threat that will require a response,” he wrote.
Germany has not officially confirmed deliveries of this weapon to Ukraine.
I’m not saying I agree with the calculations or even that I’m right but my hot take:
Placing limitations on the weapons systems did a few things. One, kept Russia from claiming xyz NATO country was providing weapons to explicitly strike Russia with which could be seen as further escalation. Two, as a way to put pressure on Russia to back down or accept a peace agreement by allowing a method of ramping up the effectiveness of the weapons systems provided to the Ukrainians. Third, there’s no way if these are used against Russia they either won’t kill civilians at some point. That’s an easy propaganda win for Russia when they can point to the evil NATO bros giving Ukraine weapons to kill Russian civilians in Russia. One could argue we were trying to prevent that by limiting their usage via range restrictions.
Now that the play hasn’t really done what they expected it makes sense to “take the gloves off” and let those weapons systems do more, including strikes further into Russia.
In short, it was meant to be a deterrent to Russia and to have maybe a gentleman’s agreement of sorts that if Ukraine doesn’t use their weapons platform that way then Russia might do the same (ie: try to encourage Russia to not bomb civilians indiscriminately). That clearly failed.
Western powers think russia is a modern country that as a culture gives a damn about civillian lives. Nato does still not understand its greatest enemy at a very basic level.