World
Zelenskyy says Ukraine can't win war unless US lifts limits on striking military targets in Russia
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy embraced the support of allies who have provided new military aid and a path to joining NATO.
- But Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine cannot win the war with Russia unless restrictions are lifted on the use of U.S. weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
- A devastating missile attack by Russia on the eve of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit underscored that Putin may not be ready to make peace for some time.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday embraced the support of allies who have provided substantial new military aid and a path to joining NATO, even as he emphatically pushed for the help to arrive faster and for restrictions to be lifted on the use of U.S. weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
“If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations,” Zelenskyy said alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in the final hours of a summit that saw Ukraine receive fresh commitments of weapons and other support to firm up its defense against Russia.
The summit unfolded against the backdrop of a tumultuous American political cycle, with mounting angst among Democrats about President Joe Biden’s ability to serve another four years following a shocking debate flop two weeks ago that threw the future of his presidency into doubt.
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An untimely verbal flub Thursday evening did little to soothe concerns, when Biden at an event for the unveiling of an agreement called the Ukraine Compact mistakenly introduced Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Some in the room gasped at Biden’s gaffe, which the U.S. president quickly sought to clean up by saying, “President Putin? You’re going to beat President Putin,” Biden said to Zelenskyy. “I’m so focused on beating Putin, we got to worry about it.”
New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron declined to criticize Biden. Macron said “we can all have a slip of the tongue” and said Biden, with whom he spoke during Wednesday’s dinner, “is very much on top of things.” And Starmer declined at least five times to answer directly about Biden’s gaffe, instead praising him for his leadership and his preparation in putting the event together and securing solid outcomes for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak during a press conference at the NATO summit in Washington, on July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
All eyes were on Biden as he closed out the summit of 32 NATO leaders in Washington with a news conference.
Asked about Zelenskyy’s appeal for greater freedom in targeting Russian forces, Biden showed no sign of easing the U.S. limits, saying he was following the advice of his defense and intelligence officials.
“If he had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense?” Biden said of Zelenskyy. He later added, “We’re making it on a day-to-day basis … how far they should go in” to Russian territory.
Ukraine has been the primary focus for European and North American leaders at the summit of the 75-year-old military alliance, with Biden earlier in the day announcing a new military aid package and pledging to Zelenskyy: “We will stay with you, period.”
Though Zelenskyy offered public thanks for the package and a promise by NATO leaders that Ukraine is now on an “irreversible path” to membership in the military alliance, he also sounded an alarm: Ukraine cannot win the war with Russia, now in its third year, unless the U.S. ends limits on the use of its weapons to attack military targets in Russia.
The Biden administration permits Ukraine to fire weapons into Russian territory only for the purpose of hitting back against Russian forces that are attacking or preparing to attack them, concerned that the broader use of American-made weaponry could provoke Russia to widen the war.
Zelenskyy has been pressing for greater latitude so that U.S. weapons could be used to hit critical military bases and installations deeper in Russian territory.
The calls to drop the restrictions have grown in recent months, in the wake of Russian military gains during months in which political battles in the U.S. delayed vital military support for Ukraine.
Stoltenberg and Macron have championed Ukraine’s efforts to win more leeway in how it can use U.S.-provided arms. If we tell Ukrainians “you do not have the right to reach the point from which the missiles are fired, we are in fact telling them that we are delivering weapons to you, but you cannot defend yourself,” Macron said in May.
At a one-on-one meeting with Zelenskyy, Biden touted the aid package as his eighth since taking office, with this latest one consisting of $225 million of support, including an additional Patriot missile system to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses against a deadly onslaught of Russian airstrikes.
The Patriot air defense system, the second the U.S. has provided to Ukraine, is one of several announced this week at the NATO summit and is part of a swell of pledges to get weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian attacks, including one of the deadliest of the war this week that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv.
The devastating missile attack on the eve of the summit celebrating NATO’s 75th anniversary underscored that Putin may not be ready to make peace for some time.
In a comment on NATO allies declaring that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to membership, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, which is chaired by Putin, said Moscow should do everything to “make this irreversible path of Ukraine to NATO lead to the disappearance of either Ukraine or NATO, or better both.”
While promising that Ukraine will one day be a member of the alliance, NATO leaders have said it can only join after the war with Russia and when the allies agree it has met all conditions.
In addition to the offers of more military support, NATO launched a new program to underwrite deliveries of military equipment and coordinate training for Ukraine’s beleaguered armed forces. NATO members also committed to keep up current levels of military aid — about $43.5 billion annually — for at least a year.
The summit has also been shadowed by concerns about growing Chinese and North Korean support for Russia’s invasion.
The flurry of final events at the NATO summit come a day after NATO labeled China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. China in turn accused NATO of seeking security at the expense of others and it has warned the Western military alliance not to bring the same “chaos” to Asia.
Warning comes as 400 million barrels of oil are being released from global reserves during waterway’s closure.
Published On 11 Mar 2026
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it will not allow “a litre of oil” through the Strait of Hormuz as the closure of the key Gulf waterway continues to roil global energy markets during the US-Israeli war on Iran.
A spokesperson for the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters said on Wednesday that any vessel linked to the United States and Israel or their allies “will be considered a legitimate target”.
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“You will not be able to artificially lower the price of oil. Expect oil at $200 per barrel,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The price of oil depends on regional security, and you are the main source of insecurity in the region.”
Global oil prices have fluctuated wildly this week during continued US-Israeli attacks against Iran, which has retaliated by firing missiles and drones at targets across the wider Middle East.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies transit, and production slowdowns in some Gulf countries have raised concerns of further disruptions.
Concerns around the duration of the war, which began on February 28 and has shown no sign of abating, are also adding to uncertainty, sending oil prices soaring.
On Wednesday, three ships were hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security and risk firms said, including a Thai-flagged cargo vessel that came under attack about 11 nautical miles (18km) north of Oman.
Release of oil reserves
World leaders, including members of the Group of Seven (G7) and the European Union, have been mulling what action to take in response to the war’s impact on global economies.
Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen and an expert in maritime security, said Europe will be facing “a major energy supply crisis” if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened.
“For the shipping industry right now, it’s impossible to go through the Strait of Hormuz,” Bueger told Al Jazeera. “And if there are not stronger signals in the near future that they can at least try to go through the strait, then we are looking at a major shipping crisis, which can last weeks if not months.”
On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that its 32 member countries had unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves to try to lower prices.
“This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said during an address from the agency’s headquarters in Paris.
“But to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.
The reserve supplies will be made available “over a timeframe that is appropriate” for each member state, the IEA said in a statement without providing details.
German Economy and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche said earlier in the day that the country would comply with the release while Austria also said it would make part of its emergency oil reserve available and extend its national strategic gas reserve.
Meanwhile, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it would release about 80 million barrels from its private and national oil reserves.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the country, which gets about 70 percent of its oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz, would begin releasing the reserves on Monday.
U.S. installations damaged in strikes
Iran has responded to the U.S.-Israeli assault on the country by launching drones and missiles at American targets across the Middle East, hitting embassies, killing U.S. soldiers, and damaging military bases and air defense infrastructure.
The New York Times has identified at least 17 damaged U.S. sites and other installations, several of which have been struck more than once since the war began. Our analysis is based on high-resolution, commercial satellite imagery, verified social media videos and statements by U.S. officials and Iranian state media.
The intensity of the retaliatory strikes has signaled that Iran was more prepared for the war than many in the Trump administration had anticipated, U.S. military officials say.
For this article, we are presenting satellite images to show the scale of the damage from Iran’s attacks on U.S. sites and installations. Many of these images have been circulating publicly on news sites and social media. But in cases where they have not been, we present the imagery we obtained from satellite image companies and show only a zoomed-out view of each location to limit the amount of detail viewable in those images.
Military sites
Iran has fired thousands of missiles and drones at both U.S. and allied country military sites across the region. The United States and its allies have intercepted most of them, U.S. officials say, but at least 11 American military bases or installations have been damaged — nearly half of all such sites in the region.
On Feb. 28, the first day of conflict, Iran targeted several U.S. military facilities, including Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring Base in Kuwait; and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East.
Satellite images show extensive damage to buildings and communication infrastructure at several locations.
A video taken on March 1 shows an Iranian drone exploding near sports facilities at Camp Buehring in Kuwait. No casualties were reported.
It is difficult to estimate the full cost of damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliatory strikes. A Pentagon assessment provided to Congress last week put the cost of the single strike on the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain on Feb. 28 at about $200 million, according to a congressional official.
On March 1, an Iranian drone struck a structure housing military personnel at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait, killing six American service members.
Satellite imagery shows the roof of that building partially collapsed.
An additional U.S. service member was killed in a separate Iranian strike on March 1 at a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, bringing the toll to seven, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
The pace of Iranian attacks has slowed since the war’s opening days, but the strikes have continued. Al Udeid Air Base, Ali Al Salem Air Base, Al Dhafra Air Base, Camp Buehring and the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters have all been struck more than once.
Missiles launched from Iran have flown as far away as Turkey. On March 4, NATO intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile headed toward Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, according to a senior U.S. military official. The base hosts a large U.S. Air Force contingent. Iran’s military denied firing the missile.
A second Iranian missile entered Turkish airspace and was shot down by NATO, according to a Turkish defense ministry statement on Monday.
Air defense and communication infrastructure
Among the costliest American losses to infrastructure have been to the air defense systems that protect U.S. and allied interests across the Middle East.
Iran has systematically targeted radar and communications systems, including components of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, which uses a radar to track and intercept incoming aerial threats throughout the region.
At Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, an important hub for the U.S. Air Force in Jordan, satellite imagery from February shows radar equipment at the base’s southern edge. An image taken two days after the war began shows severe damage to what appears to be an air defense sensor.
Military budget and contract documents indicate a single radar unit of this type can cost up to half a billion dollars.
A video from Feb. 28 shows an Iranian drone striking the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, damaging what appears to be a communications radome, a weatherproof cover that protects radar and communication equipment.
Gulf nations have also bought air defense equipment from American companies and deployed them near critical infrastructure, including oil refineries. Those foreign radar systems share information with the U.S. military, forming what defense analysts describe as a de facto, expanded U.S. military sensor network.
Iran has targeted such sites where air defense equipment was recently observed, like the Al Ruwais facility in the United Arab Emirates. Satellite imagery of the site from last year shows a THAAD unit near storage structures.
A satellite image taken after Iranian attacks shows significant damage to the storage structures. The Times was unable to verify whether the mobile THAAD unit was inside the storage structures at the time of the strikes.
Near Umm Dahal in Qatar, a long range AN/FPS-132 radar — built at a cost of $1.1 billion to provide early warning coverage across a 3,000 mile radius — apparently sustained damage to its main radar structure, as seen in satellite imagery.
The full extent of damage to U.S. air defense and communication infrastructure remains unclear. Michael Eisenstadt, a director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the affected radars would be difficult to repair or replace.
But Seth G. Jones, a president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the damage would most likely not significantly degrade U.S. military capabilities in this war. “The U.S. has such redundancy in collecting intelligence and other information from sensor networks, whether it’s land-based radars, aircrafts or space-based systems,” he said.
Diplomatic sites
Iran has also struck nonmilitary U.S. targets such as the consulate in Dubai, and embassies in Kuwait City, Kuwait, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, forcing temporary closures. There have been no reported injuries in any of these attacks.
On Saturday night, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was targeted in a rocket attack. No casualties were reported. It was not immediately clear who was behind it and how much damage was caused. It is not included in The Times’s tally of damaged sites.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said on March 7 that Iranian ballistic missile attacks had dropped 90 percent since the first day of the conflict and drone attacks by 83 percent. Despite the declining pace, Iran has continued to strike American targets across the region.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention,” accusing the Taliban of “unjustly” detaining Americans and other foreign nationals.
In his announcement on Monday, Rubio said the Taliban continues to use “terrorist tactics” that he insisted “need to end.”
“I am designating Afghanistan as a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention,” Rubio said in a statement. “The Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions. These despicable tactics need to end.”
The secretary also called on the terror group to free a pair of Americans who are “unjustly detained” in Afghanistan.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention.” (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“It is not safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals,” he said. “The Taliban needs to release Dennis Coyle, Mahmoud Habibi, and all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan now and commit to cease the practice of hostage diplomacy forever.”
Coyle, 64, was detained more than a year ago without charges by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to his family, noting that he still has not been charged. His family said he was legally working to support Afghan language communities as an academic researcher.
Habibi, a 38-year-old American citizen who was born in Afghanistan, was taken along with his driver from their vehicle in the capital of Kabul in August 2022 by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to the State Department.
The FBI said Habibi was previously Afghanistan’s director of civil aviation and worked for the Kabul-based telecommunications company Asia Consultancy Group. The FBI said the Taliban detained 29 other employees of the company but has released most of them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Taliban continues to use “terrorist tactics” that he insisted “need to end.” (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
Habibi has not been heard from since his arrest, and the Taliban has not disclosed his whereabouts or condition, according to the State Department and FBI. The Taliban has previously denied it detained Habibi.
The U.S. is also calling for the return of the remains of Paul Overby, an author who was last seen close to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan in 2014, according to Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the situation.
The State Department could restrict the use of U.S. passports for travel to Afghanistan if the Taliban does not meet the U.S. government’s demands, the sources told the outlet.
A passport restriction of this kind is currently only in place for North Korea.
The Taliban called the decision by Rubio to designate Afghanistan a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” regrettable, adding that it wanted to resolve the matter through dialogue.
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The Taliban called the decision to designate Afghanistan a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” regrettable. (Reuters/Ali Khara)
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The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country that ended the 20-year war in the region.
Rubio gave the “state sponsor of wrongful detention” designation to Iran late last month, just one day before the U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country. He warned that the U.S. could restrict travel to Iran over its detention of U.S. citizens, but there have not been any restrictions yet.
“The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions,” Rubio said at the time.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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