Russia Ukraine War: Ukrainian officials have pressed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British foreign minister David Lammy, on a joint visit to Kyiv, to allow it to fire long-range American ATACMS missiles and British ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles at targets deep inside Russia, which they had been reluctant to do so far. Reports indicate that the UK has allowed Ukraine to use its ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles, which could trigger a significant escalation in the conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long pushed back against allies who have supplied long-range weapons but told Kyiv they cannot use them deep inside Russia for fear of instigating a direct conflict between the West and Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Allowing these weapons to be used against Russia indicates that the US is moving towards a shift in its policy.
US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are also meeting on Friday amid the intensified push to strike targets deeper in Russia, where they are expected to talk about the use of long-range missiles, including more Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Until now the Storm Shadow missiles have been limited to Russian targets operating inside Ukraine, as well as in occupied Crimea.
What are ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles?
The Storm Shadow cruise missile, jointly developed by the United Kingdom and France in 1994, has a range of more than 150 miles and can be fired by Ukrainian aircraft. Powered by a turbo-jet engine, the 1,300kg Storm Shadow travels at speeds of more than 600mph, is just over five metres long and has a wingspan of three metres.
The missile is equipped with its own navigation system and it descends to a low altitude after launch to avoid detection before locking on to its target using an infra-red seeker. Upon its final approach, the missile climbs to a higher altitude to maximise the chances of hitting the target.
On impact, it penetrates the target before a delayed fuse detonates the main warhead. The Storm Shadow missile has been in service since 1994 and has been deployed by British and French air forces in various conflict zones, including Iraq and Libya. It has already been integrated into Ukrainian fighter aircraft, including the Soviet-built Su-24 bombers.
According to BBC, each missile costs nearly $1 million, so they tend to be launched as part of a carefully planned flurry of much cheaper drones, sent ahead to confuse and exhaust the enemy’s air defences. They have been used with great effect, hitting Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters at Sevastopol and making the whole of Crimea unsafe for the Russian navy.
Russia threatens to retaliate if missiles used
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has told the West on Wednesday that any decision to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range Western missiles would deepen the conflict and would trigger a response from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, a move he said would alter the nature and scope of the conflict.
In some of his most aggressive comments on the subject yet, Putin said such a move would drag the countries supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles directly into the war since satellite targeting data and the actual programming of the missiles' flight paths would have to be done by NATO military personnel because Kyiv did not have the capabilities itself. "So this is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is a question of deciding whether or not NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict," Putin told Russian state TV.
"If this decision is taken, it will mean nothing less than the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This will be their direct participation, and this, of course, will significantly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict,” he added. Russia would be forced to take what Putin called "appropriate decisions" based on the new threats.
Can the weapons help Ukraine?
The renewed deliberations by the West on allowing Kyiv to use its long-range weapons to strike Russia are part of an answer to what it says is an escalation of the war by Moscow, which it says has received ballistic missiles from Iran. Tehran said the claims were "ugly propaganda".
Russia, the world's largest nuclear power, is also in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine - the circumstances in which Moscow would use nuclear weapons - and Putin is being pressed by an influential foreign policy hawk to change it to state Russia's willingness to use nuclear arms against countries that "support NATO aggression in Ukraine."
However, American officials have expressed doubts over the amount of weapon systems it has to provide Ukraine to make a substantive difference to conditions on the ground, according to one of the officials. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also said he did not believe providing Ukraine with long-range weapon systems would be a game-changer in the war.
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