WASHINGTON, May 29. /TASS/. Washington continues to pursue a policy of neither encouraging nor enabling strikes outside Ukraine's borders, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at a briefing.
"Our policy has been that we don't encourage or enable strikes outside Ukraine's borders," he said with regard to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s suggestion that allies should once again consider the possibility for Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to target military facilities inside Russia. "We always discuss with our allies and partners whatever is on their mind and we have those meetings but I don't have anything further," Miller noted.
He added that "the Ukrainian military is not embedding itself inside malls and schools and other civilian targets."
Meanwhile, US media outlets have repeatedly reported the opposite. The Washington Post wrote in March 2022 that "Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: the military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs." A female resident of the town of Chasov Yar told CNN in March 2024 that Ukrainian troops were hiding behind "civilians’ backs." Amnesty International said in a report in August 2022 that the Ukrainian military had set up bases in schools and hospitals.
In an interview with the Economist, Stoltenberg suggested NATO allies should reconsider whether Ukraine could use Western-supplied weapons to carry out strikes on military facilities inside Russia's internationally recognized borders. However, Stoltenberg said at a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly that there should be no NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine because otherwise, it would be difficult to keep the bloc out of the conflict.