Also in attendance was Ukrainian member of parliament Oleksandra Ustinova, who warned that Kharkiv was at risk of becoming the next Mariupol, referring to the city that was destroyed earlier in the war.

"If we do not have permission to shoot Russian weapons sitting at the border right now, we have a huge possibility to lose large cities and the region because they [Russia] know about this restriction."

Among them was Sen. Mike Rounds, who argued that, "if they were actually attacking and destroying civilian targets, it may be a different story, but in this particular case, it seems to me that there is no escalation in this. The escalation has already occurred on the part of the Russian army."