Kiev has deployed ATACMS missiles secretly delivered from the US to attack Russian targets

These new missiles are fired from HIMARS launchers. They have a range of almost 300 kilometers, almost double the range of those supplied by the United States to Ukraine since last October, and quadruple against standard HIMARS missiles; Kyiv was very keen on them. According to one unnamed official, Washington will provide more as part of the military aid package that US President Joe Biden signed into law today.

Biden approved the delivery of long-range ATACMS missiles in early March, and a “significant” number of them were included in the $300 million military aid package announced by the United States at the time. The AP notes that the unnamed officials did not specify how many missiles were included in the March military aid package or how many of them are included in the current one worth around a billion dollars.

Washington stopped being afraid

Ukraine has been forced to implement arms rationing as it faces intensifying Russian attacks. It has pleaded for long-range missiles, as they will allow it to engage Russian targets at long distances and Ukrainian troops will be able to stay out of range of Russian weapons.

For months, the United States has resisted Kiev’s insistence that it send the weapons, fearing that the Ukrainian military could use them to launch attacks deep inside Russian territory, escalating the conflict. For this reason, the American administration sent medium-range tactical ballistic missiles with a range of about 160 kilometers to the Ukrainians last October.

They will be put to good use

But an unnamed U.S. military official said today that the White House and military officials have carefully considered the risks of providing long-range missiles to Ukraine and have concluded that now is the right time to do so.

In an interview with the AP agency, the deputy head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Christopher Grady, said that long-range weapons will help Ukraine eliminate Russian logistics hubs and places where soldiers are concentrated and are not on the front line. He declined to say what kind of weapons specifically, but said that “if deployed well, they will have great destructive effects”, and that he believes they will be well used.

“And believe it or not, the sky didn’t fall on Earth, there was no ‘World War III,’Ukrainian military correspondent and writer Ilya Ponomarenko responded. “Ukraine alone, thanks to an ATACMS strike, eliminated advanced Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea. Why wasn’t it possible two years ago, when so many good sons and daughters of Ukraine were still alive and we had a much, much better chance of defeating Russian aggression?” complained X on the social network.

“That means Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk, Voronezh, Sevastopol, Oryol, Lipetsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Rostov-on-Don... This is a huge territory of our country, which the Ukrainians will now reach,” said presenter Olga Skabeyeva on state television.

Ukrainian officials have not yet officially acknowledged that their country has received long-range ATACMS missiles. However, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked US lawmakers for approving the military aid package on Tuesday, he wrote on the X social network that “Ukraine’s capabilities in long-range weapons, artillery and air defense are extremely important tools for the rapid restoration of a just peace.”

“All the details have been finalized,Zelensky announced the agreement on long-range missiles on Tuesday after a phone call with Biden, according to the Kyiv Independent newspaper.

One of the unnamed officials the AP spoke to 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 military equipment to Kiev. Russia has acquired a number of these missiles from North Korea and is deploying them during the war in Ukraine, the official said. This prompted the US government to give the green light to their delivery to Ukraine.

According to American sources, it is the Ukrainian army used last week to attack the Dzhankoy military airport in Crimea, which Russia took from Ukraine ten years ago. The Ukrainians used them again last night during the attack on Berdyansk in the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporozhye region.