Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday that the biggest problem Kyiv has faced in its war against Russia is the Western concern for escalation and the risk of provoking Moscow.
“Ever since the beginning of the large-scale invasion, the biggest problem Ukraine has been facing is the domination of the concept of escalation in the decision-making processes among our partners,” Kuleba said, according to Reuters.
The foreign minister’s comments come as Ukraine is pushing hard for the US to allow long-range strikes inside Russian territory using US-provided missiles. Russia has strongly warned against the move and suggested that it would risk World War III.
“The war is always about a lot of hardware: money, weapons, resources but the real problems are always here, in the heads,” Kuleba said. “Most of our partners are afraid of discussing the future of Russia… This is something that is very upsetting because if we do not speak about the future of the source of threat, then we cannot build strategy.”
Throughout the war, the US and NATO have taken steps that they previously ruled out over escalation concerns, such as providing tanks and fighter jets. The most recent significant escalation was President Biden’s decision to give Ukraine the greenlight to use US weapons in attacks on Russian border regions. A few months later, Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk.
Kuleba made the comments during a conversation with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who expressed support for allowing Ukraine to launch long-range strikes with NATO weapons. Sikorski said NATO should “let Ukraine fight with whatever it has, with whatever we have delivered them, and let’s deliver them more.”