- Ukraine's Kursk offensive has brought about a "turning point," a leading European official said.
- Marko Mihkelson said it showed what Ukraine could do if its allies dropped their weapons restrictions.
Ukraine's Kursk offensive shows what the country could achieve if its allies dropped their weapons restrictions, a leading European official said.
The attack into Russian territory is "proving to everyone that if the Ukrainians were allowed to fight without the restrictions imposed by the West, they could not only stop Russia's advance but also win this war," Marko Mihkelson, chairman of Estonia's Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Kyiv Post.
Mihkelson also told the Post that Ukraine's incursion had brought about a "turning point," and placed Ukraine in a "much stronger" position to ask for the military equipment it needs.
Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack into Russia's Kursk region early last month, and had occupied almost 500 square miles of Russian territory as of last week, according to Ukraine's army chief, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.
The move has forced Russia to redeploy tens of thousands of soldiers to Kursk and stopped Russian advances in the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Syrskyi told CNN last week.
It's also complicated Russian plans for offensive operations later this year, Ukraine's military spymaster, Kyrylo Budanov, told Ukrainian radio station Radio Charter on Saturday, per a translation by the Institute for the Study of War.
It's unclear how the incursion will end, but military experts say it would be going even better if Ukraine's Western allies let it use the long-range weapons they've supplied to strike targets inside Russia.
Western allies lifted some restrictions in May, allowing Ukraine to strike Russian troops building up at its borders, but it's still not allowed to use Western weapons to carry out deep strikes.
Speaking at a summit of defense ministers at Ramstein airbase in Germany on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed the long-range air capability to stop Russia's "aerial terror."
"We also need strong long-range decisions from our partners to bring closer the just peace we are striving for," he said, per the Kyiv Post.
There are 245 military targets in Russia within range of the ATACMS missiles Ukraine now has on hand, according to a map released last month by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project.
Last month, military experts told BI that letting Ukraine conduct long-range strikes on military-related sites inside Russia could not only help it destroy Russian assets but also damage Russia's economy and bring the Kremlin's ability to protect its airspace into question.
But US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that striking targets deep within Russia with US and other Western weaponry would not make a significant impact on Ukraine's defense against Russia's aggression.
"There's no one capability that will, in and of itself, be decisive in this campaign," Austin said, per Politico.