American long-range missiles have arrived in Kiev. And they were immediately used to strike a Russian military complex in Crimea. It happened Thursday evening and the Wall Street Journal reports it exclusively.
The attack hit a communications center of the Russian Air Defense Forces in the city of Alushta, according to a Ukrainian defense official. While Ukraine is struggling to contain Russian forces along the northern and eastern fronts, the weapons Ukraine has repeatedly requested have arrived: the ATACMS missilesacronym for Army Tactical Missile System, used against high-value targets such as air defense systems, fighters and warships.
War, Russian military ships destroyed and damaged by Ukrainian attacks: drones and long-range missiles are decisive
Ukraine, American long-range missiles arrive
The long-range ATACMS, first supplied by the United States earlier this year, can hit targets more than 180 miles away.
The Biden administration has barred Kiev from using U.S.-supplied weapons to strike Russian territory. This made Crimea the main target of the Ukrainians. The first time Ukraine used the long-range variant of the ATACMS hit an airfield in Crimea in April.
This week, Ukrainian military officials said they struck the port of Sevastopol, damaging a warship. Although officials did not say what weapons were used, Russian officials in Crimea said they shot down nine ATACMS missiles on the night of the attack.
The Ukrainian military also said it destroyed an advanced Russian S-400 air defense system on Wednesday, which analysts blamed on an ATACMS attack near Mospyne in eastern Ukraine. Three weeks ago, an ATACMS attack on a training camp in the occupied Luhansk region killed dozens of Russian soldiers, according to analysts.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that American weapons had been used to strike “a wide variety of targets outside the conflict zone,” but did not name any sites.
The US decision to send longer-range ATACMS has been the subject of intense debate for over a year. Some members of Congress have pressured the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to fire ATACMS and other U.S.-made weapons into Russian territory. The ban on doing so, according to military analysts, has hampered Ukraine’s efforts to halt Moscow’s recent invasion of the Kharkiv region.
German Iris-T missiles
In the meantime they are arriving even German missiles: the very modern Iris-T type air-to-air defensive missiles. The German Ministry of Defense made this known on X by relaunching an announcement by Minister Boris Pistorius. «We have again delivered to Ukraine a combined fire unit Iris-T Slm and Iris-T Sls, a highly modern and well-proven medium and short-range air defense system», declared the minister in the written message released last night. The weapon system comes “directly from German industry”, added Pistorius, recalling that “for months Russia has been intensifying its air attacks against Ukraine, killing people and destroying important infrastructure”. “Together with the recently delivered Patriot system, we are strengthening Ukrainian air defenses in the fight against Russia’s brutal war of aggression, which violates international law,” the minister concluded. The shipment of the new Iris-Ts by May was announced this month.
«In the last year and a half or so», Iris missiles «proved very effective in protecting the main Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Lviv from Russian air attacks. They also intercepted cruise missiles targeting crucial energy infrastructures”, recalls the website of the German weekly Der Spiegel, adding that “Berlin promised Kiev a total of nine Iris-T Slm and eleven Iris-T Sls air defense systems, produced by the German company Diehl Defense”. Pistorius, together with his Foreign Affairs colleague Annalena Baerbock, have been conducting an intense campaign for several weeks, both in front and behind the scenes, to obtain additional air defense systems for Ukraine, but so far with “little success”, he recalls again the weekly. The two ministers launched their initiative with the promise to deliver a third Patriot air defense system to Ukraine: although Berlin has already received promises of money for the purchase of systems, no one is yet willing to deliver the Patriots.
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