US lifts 10-year gun ban on Ukraine's controversial Azov Brigade

A controversial Ukrainian battalion has received weapons from the United States for the first time in a decade as kyiv continues to strike targets in Russia.

The US State Department announced on Tuesday that the Azov Brigade was now authorized to use US weapons against Russia, marking a further expansion of US support for kyiv.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Kharkiv praised the decision to leave Ukraine striking inside Russian territory with Western weapons as bringing relative “calm” to the besieged city.

However, Russia said it managed to claim two villages in Ukraine on Tuesday: one in Kharkiv Oblast and one in the Russian-occupied parts of Luhansk Oblast.

The Azov Brigade, which has far-right and ultranationalist roots, is part of the Ukrainian National Guard and grew out of a battalion that fought for Russia occupation of Crimea 10 years ago.

But in response to the neo-Nazi ideology of the group's founders, the United States banned the regiment from using American weapons in 2014.

The State Department said it found “no evidence” of abuses or gross human rights violations in the Azov Brigade, which was absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard as the 12th Forces Brigade special.

The current members of the group reject any connection with the far rightbut have been designated as terrorists by Russia, which continues to describe them as an “ultranationalist armed formation”.

Read more: Brit who joined Azov says they're not 'monsters'

In response to the lifting of the ban, the military group said on Instagram: “This is a new page in the history of our unit.

“Azov becomes even more powerful, even more professional and even more dangerous for the occupiers.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Moscow had an “extremely negative” view of Washington's decision, saying it showed the United States was “ready to flirt with neo-Nazis.”

This comes as Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in an interview in Berlin the US decision to partially lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons reduced the number of attacks on the city.

“It helped,” he said. “Perhaps this is why Kharkiv has experienced… this period of… calm in recent weeks… during which there have been no major strikes as was the case, for example, in May.”

Sky News learned over the weekend that a Ukrainian warplane had fired a weapon for the first time that hit a target in Russia.

A Ukrainian military source said a “Russian command node” was hit in the Belgorod region in western Russia on Sunday.

It also comes after Russian forces captured the village of Miasozharivka in Luhansk and the village of Tymkivka in Kharkiv, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

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The Russian Defense Ministry also said its Kazan nuclear submarine and Admiral Gorshkov frigate were practicing the use of high-precision weapons in the Atlantic Ocean.