The West finally allowed Ukraine to strike back at Russia — and it seems to be working
CNNCNN — Bankir and his men have been trying to fight off Russian attacks along the Ukrainian front lines for more than two years. In May this year, Russia launched another cross-border attack on the region, trying to exploit Ukraine’s ammunition shortages before the expected arrival of the first Western weapons. International security expert Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian defense official and the co-director of foreign relations and international security programs at the Razumkov Center in Kyiv, told CNN that the re-occupation of previously liberated areas north of Kharkiv was a “tragic moment” for Ukraine. “If the decision wasn’t made, if we lost American support and military assistance, that would have been a game changer.” But the possibility of Russian re-occupation of parts of Kharkiv region convinced some of Ukraine’s key allies, including the US, to lift the restrictions. “Ukraine started conducting HIMARS strikes on targets in the Belgorod region and forced the Russians to push their S-300 system with which they were striking Kharkiv much further away, so now Kharkiv is beyond their range of Russian S-300 systems,” he said.