Ukraine for the first time has begun using long-range ballistic missiles provided secretly by the US, bombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight, US officials said on Wednesday.
Long sought by Ukrainian leaders, the new missiles give Ukraine nearly double the striking distance — up to 300km — that it had with the mid-range version of the weapon that it received from the US in October last year. One of the officials said the US is providing more of these missiles in a new military aid package signed by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Biden approved delivery of the long-range Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, in February, and then last month the US included a “significant” number of them in a US$300 million aid package announced, one official said.
Photo: AP
The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the delivery before it became public, would not provide the exact number of missiles given last month or in the latest aid package, which totals about US$1 billion.
Ukraine has been forced to ration its munition and is facing increasing Russian attacks. Kyiv had been pursuing the long-range system because the missiles provide a critical ability to strike Russian targets that are farther away, allowing Ukrainian forces to stay safely out of range.
Information about the delivery was kept so quiet that US lawmakers and others in recent days have been demanding that Washington send the weapons — not knowing they were already in Ukraine.
For months, the US resisted sending Ukraine the long-range missiles out of concern that Kyiv could use them to hit deep into Russian territory, enraging Moscow and escalating the conflict. That was a key reason the administration sent the mid-range version, with a range of about 160km, in October instead.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman Admiral Christopher Grady on Wednesday said that the White House and military planners looked carefully at the risks of providing long-range missiles to Ukraine and determined that the time was right to provide them now.
He said that long-range weapons would help Ukraine take out Russian logistics nodes and troop concentrations that are not on the front lines. Grady declined to identify what specific weapons were being provided, but said they would be “very disruptive if used properly, and I’m confident they will be.”
Like many of the other sophisticated weapons systems provided to Ukraine, the administration weighed whether their use would risk further escalating the conflict. The administration is continuing to make clear that the weapons cannot be used to hit targets inside Russia. US Department of State spokesman Vedant Patel on Wednesday said that Biden directed his national security team to send the ATACMS specifying that they be used inside Ukrainian sovereign territory.
“I think the time is right, and the boss [Biden] made the decision the time is right to provide these based on where the fight is right now,” Grady said on Wednesday. “I think it was a very well-considered decision, and we really wrung it out — but again, any time you introduce a new system, any change — into a battlefield, you have to think through the escalatory nature of it.”
Ukrainian officials have not publicly acknowledged the receipt or use of long-range ATACMS. However, in thanking the US Congress for passing the new aid bill on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the social platform X said that “Ukraine’s long-range capabilities, artillery and air defense are extremely important tools for the quick restoration of a just peace.”
One of the US officials said the Biden administration warned Russia last year that if Moscow acquired and used long-range ballistic missiles in Ukraine, Washington would provide the same capability to Kyiv.
Russia got some of those weapons from North Korea and has used them on the battlefield in Ukraine, said the official, prompting the Biden administration to green-light the new long-range missiles.
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