The UK will supply long-range rocket artillery to Ukraine, despite the threat on Sunday of Russian President Vladimir Putin of bombing new targets if similar US weapons were delivered to Kyiv.
The UK will send a handful of M270 multi-launch rocket systems, which can hit targets up to 50 miles away, in the hope that they could disrupt the concentrated Russian artillery that has been hitting cities east of ‘Ukraine.
Ben Wallace, the UK Secretary of Defense, argued that the decision to send rocket launchers was justified because “as Russia’s tactics change, so must our support for Ukraine.” The move risks further provoking an already irritated Kremlin.
Ahead of the British announcement, Putin told Rossiya State Television that Russia would retaliate more if the United States secured the delivery of the Himars rocket artillery promised by the White House last week.
“We will attack those targets that we have not yet been hitting,” said the Russian leader, who has been heavily involved in operational military decisions for the past three months of the war. He did not specify what those goals were.
On Sunday morning, Russian cruise missiles struck a railway depot in the eastern Dniprovsky suburb of Kyiv. Ukraine said the strike affected repair work on a railway wagon; Moscow said it had destroyed tanks sent by Eastern European countries to Ukraine.
It was the first time a site in the capital had been affected for more than five weeks. One person was admitted to hospital and a column of smoke rose and was visible from high points in the capital.
Five cruise missiles were fired from Tu-95 bombers, one of which was intercepted, the Ukrainian Air Force said, in an attack that involved a change of approach by Russian forces. Kyiv was last attacked on April 28.
Russia’s defense ministry said it was targeting an arsenal of T-72 tanks that had been delivered from Eastern European countries, and suggested it now wants to target Western weapons supplies. But Ukrainian officials said the statement was false.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, chairman of the Ukrainian Railway Board, said: “There are no tanks of this type on the plant, no military equipment. There are only cars that we repair. These carriages that we need for export, they are, in particular, the grain carriages. “
The United Kingdom, along with the United States and other Western nations, began the war by promising only to provide “defensive weapons” to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. But as Russia has made gains in the east and south of the country, Western countries have progressively sent more lethal weapons.
London said it had been cooperating closely with Washington. The British announcement comes a few days after the US said it would send four similar truck-mounted Himars systems. The US and UK systems are intended to be complementary. The range of both is much greater than any land weapon that Ukraine currently has.
M270 multi-rocket launcher
Like the US, the UK has demanded assurances from Kyiv that the M270s would not be used to attack targets within Russia. A British defense source said the weapons would be used “to defend Ukraine, in Ukraine.” They added: “We are confident that the weapons will be used properly.”
Britain did not say how many M270s it sent, although the number is small and will be comparable to the US decision to send four Himar. Ukrainian troops will be trained on how to use the launchers in the UK, the Defense Ministry added, and Kyiv forces will be supplied with the appropriate “scale” rockets.
However, Putin said he believed the West’s goal was to prolong the war in Ukraine, which has now lasted more than three months after the Russian president launched an unprovoked invasion on February 24.
“All this fuss over additional arms deliveries, in my view, has only one goal: to prolong the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin added.
Ukraine’s nuclear power company Energoatom also warned on Sunday that a Russian cruise missile had been dangerously approaching the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in the south of the country at around 5.30am, apparently in the direction of Kyiv. .
He said the missile “flew very low” over the site and that Russian forces “still do not understand that even the smallest fragment of a missile that can hit a unit of power in operation can cause a nuclear catastrophe and a radiation leak “.
Elsewhere, the British Ministry of Defense said that Ukrainian forces had counterattacked in Sievierodonetsk, eastern Ukraine, “probably diminishing the operational momentum that Russian forces had previously gained,” but offered no assessment. of whether the effort was pushing back the invaders.
On Saturday, Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, said his country’s forces had recaptured about 20 percent of the city of Donbas, which had been under attack for days by Russian bombings and concentrated airstrikes.
Haidai reiterated that statement on Sunday, adding that eight Russians had been taken prisoner and that the occupiers had “lost a large number of staff.” A humanitarian headquarters in neighboring Lysychansk had been hit with 30 shells overnight, the governor said.
Ukrainian forces were “successfully slowing down Russian operations” in the Donbas and were conducting “effective local counterattacks in Sievierodonetsk,” the Institute for War Study, a U.S. think tank, said overnight. .
The research group, which is closely monitoring the fighting, said that Russia “may still be able to capture Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk” and that it appears that “Ukraine’s defenses remain strong in this fundamental theater.”
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The British Defense Ministry said Russia relied on the “poorly equipped and trained” Luhansk separatist forces to carry out the removal of the city, a tactic it said had previously been used by Moscow forces in Syria. . “This approach probably indicates a desire to limit the casualties suffered by regular Russian forces,” he added.
A Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to the strike in Kyiv, and appeared to criticize French President Emmanuel Macron, who had said in an interview on Friday that Russia should not be humiliated in Ukraine. so that a diplomatic solution could finally be found.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the president’s office, tweeted: “While someone is calling for Russia not to be humiliated, the Kremlin is resorting to new insidious attacks. Today’s missile attacks in Kyiv have only one goal: to kill so many Ukrainians. as possible “.