WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian drone hits Russian monastery, kills one person, regional governor says

A Ukrainian drone struck a monastery in Russia's Kursk region on Friday, killing one person, the regional governor Alexei Smirnov said on the Telegram app.

The Mash Telegram channel said a 60-year-old male parishioner had died at around 0830 local time after a drone fired eight projectiles at the St. Nicholas Belogorsky Monastery in Gornal, a village near the Ukrainian border.

There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities on the reported attacks, which Reuters could not confirm independently.

Like other Russian border regions, Kursk comes under frequent attack from Kyiv's forces. On Tuesday, a drone attack on a factory producing electrical devices in the town of Korenevo caused a fire in which no one was harmed.

The men's monastery was founded in 1671 and once hosted the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who immortalised his conversations with the monks in his novel "The Brothers Karamazov," according to the monastery's website.

A child was injured in a previous attack on the monastery last August, according to Mash.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

While Ukraine is currently not allowed to use American-supplied weapons for long-range strikes into Russian territory, this might change in the future, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said.

Sullivan spoke on Friday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. Asked whether Washington was open to relaxing the “extreme limitations”on Ukraine’s use of US weapons, he would not rule anything out.

“As the war has evolved, our support has evolved,” Sullivan said. “I can’t give a definitive answer to that question for the future.”

The White House reportedly gave Kiev permission to use some of the American missiles to attack military targets across the border from Kharkov Region in late May. 

“Circumstances changed. Russia actually launched a new offensive directly across the border towards Kharkov, and common sense dictated that Ukraine had to be able to fire back against that offensive,” Sullivan explained.

However, he added, President Joe Biden’s “policy on long-range strikes into Russia has not changed thus far.”

Asked the same question earlier in the day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there is an “ongoing conversation” in Washington about relaxing the restrictions on Kiev, offering no more details.

Vladimir Zelensky has slammed the Western limitations as “crazy,”claiming Ukraine should be able to strike anywhere in Russia. 

“We have allowed Zelensky to use American weapons in the near border regions of Russia. If he had the opportunity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? No, it wouldn’t,” Biden said last week, at a press briefing in Washington.

In late June, a US-supplied ATACMS missile dropped cluster munitions on a beach near Sevastopol in Crimea, killing at least four people, including two children, and injuring more than 150. Russia said it would hold the US directly responsible for the “premeditated terrorist” attack.

President Vladimir Putin has described Ukrainian attacks inside Russian territory using Western-supplied weapons as “close to aggression.” He has also warned that Moscow might engage in an asymmetrical response, arming states or groups hostile to the US with advanced weaponry.

Reuters/RT