The United Kingdom has supplied Ukraine with several Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which will allow the Ukrainian military to strike over long distances. This was reported to CNN by sources among Western officials.
“The UK has previously stated that it will supply Ukraine with long-range weapons, and now this will include a number of Storm Shadow missiles. The British government has made it clear that this is only a response to Russia’s deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and is a proportionate response,” one of the officials said.
The Storm Shadow is a long-range air-to-ground cruise missile being jointly developed by the UK and France. It has a range of just over 250 km, and although this is shorter than the US ATACMS surface-to-surface missile (reviewed by Yuri Svitlyk here), it still has enough range to strike deep into the Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine.
A Western official told CNN that the UK had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that the missiles would only be used within Ukraine’s sovereign territory and not to attack Russian territory. British officials have frequently made public statements defining Crimea as Ukrainian sovereign territory, calling it “illegally annexed”.
These missiles are “a real game-changer in terms of range,” a senior US military official told CNN, and provide the Ukrainian military with capabilities it has been asking for since the start of the full-scale invasion. After all, the current maximum range of the weapons provided by the US is just under 80 km.
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was expected to make an official announcement in the House of Commons today that the country was sending Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, and indeed he did. “We simply will not stand by while Russia kills civilians,” Wallace said in parliament. – “Russia must recognise that it is only its actions that have led to these systems being provided to Ukraine. The Defence Secretary added that the UK is providing these weapons to Ukraine so that it can use them on its sovereign territory.
According to the manufacturer, MBDA Missile Systems, Storm Shadow is a “deep strike weapon” capable of “operating day and night in all weather conditions” and is equipped with an advanced navigation system to ensure accuracy.
The missiles come as Ukrainian troops are actively preparing for a counter-offensive aimed at retaking the temporarily occupied territories in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
This is not the first time that the UK has gone further than the US in terms of the weapons it is willing to send to Ukraine. It was the first country to announce that it would send modern Western tanks to Ukraine, pledging 14 Challenger 2 tanks (for an overview of these weapons, see here). Shortly afterwards, the US announced that it would provide M1 Abrams tanks.
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