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Long-range limits lifted as Russian missile files surface
Summary
Two developments framed security debate in Europe in late May 2025: a German announcement on weapons restrictions and a large publication of Russian procurement documents.
What did the security picture around Ukraine look like on 28 May 2025? Two reports, two days apart, pointed in different directions: one about what Ukraine's partners would allow, the other about what Russia was building.
On 26 May 2025, German chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany and several other NATO allies had lifted all restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weaponry inside Russia. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov responded that the decision ran contrary to efforts to reach a political settlement to end the war.
The two positions were therefore set against each other: allied governments widening the scope for Ukrainian strikes, and Moscow arguing that this undercut diplomacy.
On 28 May 2025, more than two million documents related to Russian military procurement were published from a public database for contractors. They included information on the modernisation and build-up of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, the military base at Yasny, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle.
Why the two items belong together
The German announcement concerned the conventional battlefield, where the question was where Ukraine could use the weapons it received. The document release concerned Russia's strategic forces, a separate sphere of military planning. Both fit into a wider pattern of confrontation that scholars and journalists have sometimes labelled a new Cold War, although others have discouraged the term.
The international backdrop was long-standing. Since the 2022 invasion, governments, particularly in Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia, have mostly reacted with criticism and condemnation, and sanctions have been imposed on Russia.
What to watch
The immediate test after 28 May 2025 was whether the loosened restrictions would shift the diplomatic track that the Kremlin said they endangered. The published procurement files, for their part, put detail about Russian missile-force modernisation into the public domain.
