This is John Batchelor, conversation with my colleague Colonel Jeff McCausen, CBS News.

The administration has given permission to Ukraine to use the weapons at hand to fire back the Russians who have been using the border

as sanctuary, according to Jeff. A one-sided affair, Russia rains down destruction on Kharkiv, masses its troops and its artillery

outside the international border between Ukraine and Russia, and the U.S. was insisting that Ukraine not strike into Russia. Now the permission is given.

It's odd, but there it is. Counter- Battery Fire. Here's Colonel Jeff McCausen to explain.

The war in Ukraine, both sides shooting each other at long range.

More of this later.

Well, the permission is, I think, the most important part.

We've been providing them, the attack comes high mards and alike.

We're now going to be providing more of those things.

But the problem was that with the attacks in and around Harquive in last few weeks, Harkey is only about 30 kilometers from the Russian border.

So Russia was able to mass forces on its own territory or launch missiles or in fact have aircraft dwelling over Russian airspace, but because of the ranges they could launch attacks then on to Harkey even the surrounding areas.

And because we had restricted the Ukrainians from firing our weapons back to strike Russian territory,

we gave them, we had in essence granted the Russians a sanctuary.

And now the Biden administration has lifted that restriction to a degree and allowed the

Ukrainians to conduct what we would call in the artillery counterfire firing back on those locations

the Russians using to strike Ukraine and also as well strike

Russian forces that may be more mobilizing on their territory just across the border.

There has been seven evidence in the last three days. This is called in Russians some

problems logistically and how they move their forces perhaps having to mass more

deeply into Russia than they have been doing in recent weeks.