Tehran – ISNA – Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has renewed his demands that all restrictions on Western hardware be lifted. The limitations were put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict, despite sending Kyiv billions of dollars worth of arms, ammunition, equipment, and cash.

“Our policy has not changed,” Pentagon spokesman Major-General Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday, explaining that Ukraine is allowed to use US-supplied weapons to defend from cross-border attacks but not for “deep strikes” into Russian territory.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that there were “no changes” to the policy with regard to the restrictions.

The US has already relaxed its policy from the initial set of restrictions, which only allowed Kyiv to strike Russian territory Ukraine claimed as its own – from Crimea to Zaporozhye, Kherson, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Zelensky claimed these restrictions hampered his military in countering the Russian operation north of Kharkov in May and demanded that they be lifted entirely. Washington responded by allowing “counter fires” against Russian forces across the border. In practice, Ukrainian forces have used their US-provided HIMARS rocket launchers to strike towns, bridges, and roads instead.

“There should be no restrictions on the range of weapons for Ukraine,” Zelensky said on Monday. “Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons.”

His chief of staff Andrey Yermak and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov are scheduled to visit Washington later this week and present a list of targets Kyiv wishes to strike, Politico reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. Yermak was behind the initial push to relax the restrictions in May.

China, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia are “worried that the West will continue to relax the conditions for using supplied weapons to attack Russia’s homeland,” Beijing’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, said on Tuesday.

The current US government drew the line on deep strikes into Russia after one of its ATACMS rockets armed with a cluster warhead struck a Crimean beach in early June. Moscow blamed Washington for the carnage and suggested it might arm “states and entities” around the world hostile to the US in response.

Meanwhile, Washington will not succeed in defeating Russia in Ukraine, US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh has said recently.

“Is Harris, once elected and in office, committed to [US President Joe] Biden’s disastrous support of what clearly is an unwinnable war against Russia in Ukraine?” he said in his blog on the Substack platform.

Earlier, Hersh wrote about the “paradox” of the current US administration’s foreign policy, which is funneling money to Kyiv, even though Ukraine is obviously not going to prevail, while at the same time refusing to engage in talks that could end the conflict.

The US will hold a presidential election on November 5. Biden was expected to run on the Democratic Party ticket, but after his disastrous performance at the June debate with the Republican contender Donald Trump, he decided to quit the race and instead supported the nomination of his Vice President Kamala Harris. Her candidacy was formally endorsed at a Democratic Party Convention in Chicago earlier this month.