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WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has been quietly blocking Ukraine from using US-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike targets inside Russia, limiting Kyiv’s ability to employ these weapons in its defense against Moscow’s invasion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing US officials.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
The news came as US President Donald Trump has grown more frustrated publicly over the three-year-old war and his inability to secure a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
After his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a subsequent meeting with European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky failed to produce observable progress, Trump said on Friday that he was again considering
slapping Russia with economic sanctions or, alternatively, walking away from the peace process.
“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be, it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” Trump said.
Trump had hoped to arrange a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky, but that has also proven difficult. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC on Friday that there was no agenda in place for a sitdown with Zelensky.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told NBC, saying no meeting was planned for now.
As the White House sought to persuade Putin to join peace talks, an approval process put in place at the Pentagon has kept Ukraine from launching strikes deep into Russian territory, the Journal reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has final say over use of the long-range weapons, the Journal said.
Neither Ukraine’s presidential office nor the defense ministry immediately responded to Reuters’ request for a comment outside business hours. The White House and the Pentagon also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
 

TAIPEI: A Taiwanese referendum on whether to restart a nuclear power plant failed on Saturday after the number of votes in favor fell short of the legally required threshold.
Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant closed in May, ending atomic energy in Taiwan and increasing concerns about the island’s almost total reliance on fossil fuel imports to power its homes, factories and chip industry.
President Lai Ching-te’s Democratic Progressive Party had opposed reopening Maanshan unless there were safety guarantees and a solution for waste disposal.

But the main opposition Kuomintang party supported restarting it, arguing that continued nuclear power supply is needed for energy security.
The referendum failed to pass with around 4.3 million people voting “yes” and 1.5 million voting “no.”
For it to succeed, at least 5 million “yes” votes were required and they had to outnumber “no” votes.
Lai told reporters after the vote that he respected the result and understood “the society’s expectations for diverse energy options.”
“The greatest consensus of Taiwan’s energy debate ... is safety. Nuclear safety is a scientific issue, and one that cannot be resolved through a single vote.”
A survey published by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation this month showed support for the referendum was high, with 66.4 percent of respondents in favor of restarting Maanshan if authorities confirm there are no safety concerns.
Critics, however, said the vote was a waste of time because the question of whether to reopen the plant was conditional on approval of “the competent authority.”
Taiwanese referendum decisions are valid for two years. If most voters had supported reopening the plant, the government could have ignored the result if safety inspections took longer than that.
“Whether it is passed or not, the decisions will go to the government. So there will be no difference at all,” said Chen Fang-yu, assistant professor of political science at Soochow University in Taipei.
At its peak in the 1980s, nuclear power made up more than 50 percent of Taiwan’s energy generation, with three plants operating six reactors across the island.
But safety concerns have grown in the past four decades following the Three Mile Island accident, dumping of nuclear waste on indigenous land on Taiwan’s Orchid Island and the Fukushima disaster.
Two plants stopped operating between 2018 and 2023 after their operating permits expired. Maanshan stopped for the same reason.