Day: August 25, 2025

• Kyiv’s long-range missiles mean it can now decide for itself to strike deep into Russia, Zelenskyy said.
• That would be a major change from when Kyiv relied on Western approval for strikes over the border.
• His comment comes after a new report said the Pentagon had blocked ATACMS strikes against Russia.

Ukraine can now strike deep into Russia without needing coordination with the US, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday.

“As of today, we are using our domestically produced long-range weapons. And to be honest, we haven’t been discussing such matters with the US lately,” Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“There was a time when there were different signals regarding our retaliatory strikes after their attacks on our energy system,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. “That was already a very long time ago. Today, we don’t even mention it.”

The Ukrainian leader’s statement signals a massive change in what had, for years, been a status quo in Kyiv’s deep strike capability. Ukraine, reliant for much of the war on long-range Western systems such as the US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, typically needed approval from Washington and its allies for strikes into Russia.

The ATACMS in particular requires US-provided satellite data and targeting for successful precision strikes, affording the Pentagon greater authority over what the weapons can be used for.

NATO countries, fearing escalation with Moscow, withheld permission for Kyiv to launch attacks into Russia for months, limiting strikes to targets in Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian officials repeatedly voiced frustration at the restriction, saying they were kneecapped and unable to strike the Kremlin’s forces massing on the border.

In November, after an extended period of indecision, the Biden administration and US allies began permitting selected attacks on Russian soil with munitions such as ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles.

But that arrangement may be in question. The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing two unnamed US officials, that the Pentagon had blocked Ukraine from firing its ATACMS into Russia and had denied at least one request.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said to WSJ that there had been “no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time.”

The report comes as the Trump administration has tried to entice Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, hoping to mediate a peace deal.

President Donald Trump also raised the topic in a Thursday TruthSocial post while criticizing his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.

“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia,” Trump wrote.

Notably, he told Time Magazine in December that he had disagreed “very vehemently” with Ukraine’s ATACMS strikes on Russia the month before.

But Ukraine has, in the last few years, developed its own long-range missiles and systems, which would allow Kyiv more leeway to independently launch precision strikes on Russian targets.

One example is the Neptune, a truck-launched subsonic cruise missile meant to hit naval targets.

The Neptune was in development before the full-scale invasion, but Ukraine has more recently unveiled a new ground-launched munition.

On August 18, its defense minister said the country was now serially producing the Flamingo, a domestically manufactured missile touted to have a range of 1,800 miles.

That distance would allow Ukraine to possibly threaten Russia’s key military production facilities in faraway areas such as the Urals.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that the Flamingo could enter mass production by February.

“The missile has undergone successful tests. It is currently our most successful missile,” he told reporters.

These precision munitions aside, Ukraine has also been regularly launching deep strikes against Russian energy facilities and weapons production plants with fixed-wing drones, which are far slower.

• AI has fueled panic about entry-level jobs — but Handshake’s CEO says young workers could come out ahead.
• Graduates are “AI native” and better positioned to succeed, said Garrett Lord.
• Leveraging AI is like “having your Iron Man suit on,” Lord said.

The rise of AI has fueled panic about the end of entry-level jobs. But one founder says young workers may actually have the upper hand.

Garrett Lord, the CEO of job search and AI training platform Handshake, said on an episode of “Lenny’s Podcast” published Sunday that today’s graduates are uniquely positioned to succeed because they’re “AI native.”

Knowing how to leverage AI is like “having your Iron Man suit on,” Lord said.

While headlines warn that AI will wipe out junior roles, Lord said employers on Handshake’s platform — from Fortune 500 companies to federal agencies — are telling him the opposite.

“A lot of people are kind of hyperbolic at saying that all young people won’t have jobs,” Lord said. “That’s not what we’re hearing from our employers,” he added.

Instead, young workers who grew up with AI tools can now take on the work of entire teams. In fields like social media marketing, for example, one employee can shoot videos, design assets, post across multiple platforms, and run analytics on their own, Lord said.

“They don’t need a data science degree to be able to do that,” he added.

Lord also said that “hundreds of millions of jobs will evolve” and workers will have to reskill, but AI is ultimately an accelerant.

“I’m really a believer that this is just like enabling human beings to be even more productive and create more impact,” he said.

Lord did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Gen Z: lucky or unlucky?

Other tech leaders have also suggested that Gen Z graduates may be in the right place at the right time.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said on Cleo Abram’s “Huge Conversations” YouTube show that AI will undoubtedly eliminate jobs — but that younger workers are better positioned to adapt.

“If I were 22 right now and graduating college, I would feel like the luckiest kid in all of history,” Altman said, adding that he’s more worried about how older employees will adapt to AI changing the workplace than college graduates.

Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist who cofounded LinkedIn, said young people should use their familiarity with AI as a selling point when seeking work.

“You are generation AI. You are AI native. So bringing the fact that you have AI in your tool set is one of the things that makes you enormously attractive,” Hoffman said in a video he published on his YouTube channel in June.

Still, not every tech CEO is optimistic.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a May interview that AI could wipe out up to half of entry-level, white-collar jobs in the next five years.

“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” he said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”