Is this a turning point in the war in Ukraine? According to several media outlets, kyiv used British long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russia for the first time, after obtaining authorization from London. kyiv had long demanded authorization to use these weapons but the West feared the reaction from Moscow, which presented this as a red line.
According to the British newspaper The Guardianthe decision to approve the strikes was made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to the Russia-Ukraine border, which British officials say constitutes a significant escalation of the conflict that has lasted for almost three years. Several Storm Shadow missiles were launched by Ukraine on at least one Russian military target, reports the Financial Timesciting three anonymous sources including a Western official informed of the strike. The Storm Shadow missiles are Anglo-French cruise missiles with a maximum range of around 250 kilometers, which have so far been used to strike Russian targets in occupied Crimea, including the headquarters of the Russian Navy fleet. Black Sea. They are generally used to precisely target bunkers and ammunition depots.
American missiles used the day before
Videos posted on social media and spread by Russian pro-war bloggers on Wednesday showed up to 12 missiles hitting a target, believed to be a command headquarters, in the village of Maryno in the Kursk region (near the Ukrainian border in the northeast), emphasizes The Guardian. “We are informed that since 2:50 p.m. the enemy has fired up to 12 Storm Shadow missiles at the area, fragments of which are pictured in the town of Marino,” reads a Telegram update from the military blogger pro-Kremlin Dva Mayora and postponed by The Kyiv Post. Ukrainian media also reported that the Marino site could have been used by North Korean and Russian officers.
So far, neither kyiv nor London have confirmed these reports of the use of British missiles against Russian territory. But the Russian Defense Ministry announced this Thursday that it had shot down “two British-made ‘Storm Shadow’ cruise missiles” fired by Ukraine and which were targeting its territory, without specifying the place or time of this interception.
This British agreement for the use of Storm Shadow, if proven, comes just 24 hours after American President Joe Biden agreed to do the same for the exploitation of ATACMS ballistic missiles. On Tuesday, November 19, a munitions depot in the Russian region of Bryansk was hit by this very first Ukrainian strike by American ATACMS missiles. However, the effects of these missile attacks, both American and British, seem relative. “There is the uncomfortable reality that Ukraine’s stockpile of Storm Shadow missiles is very limited, so their use will only have a marginal effect,” analyzes Sky News.
Joe Biden’s administration also announced on Wednesday its intention to supply Ukraine with antipersonnel mines, a type of weapon widely criticized for the number of civilian victims it causes, including long after the end of conflicts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, assured that these mines were “very important” in stopping the advance of Moscow’s soldiers. According to Washington, the mines supplied to Ukraine will be “non-persistent”, that is to say equipped with a self-destruction or self-deactivation device.
Fear of a Russian response
Through its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, Russia denounced this Tuesday early in the afternoon a “new phase of the Western war against Russia” and announced an “appropriate” response. Russia has again issued nuclear warnings in recent days, accusing the West of “wanting escalation”. According to its new doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons, made official on Tuesday, Russia can now use the latter in the event of a “massive” attack by a non-nuclear country but supported by a nuclear power, a clear reference to the Ukraine and the United States.
This change “de facto excludes the possibility of defeating the Russian armed forces on the battlefield”, stressed the head of Russian foreign intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin, on Wednesday, suggesting that Russia could resort to the atomic bomb rather than risk defeat. in a conventional war. Washington, Paris, London and the European Union have denounced an “irresponsible” attitude. Faced with fears of a Russian response, at least five Western embassies, those of the United States, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Greece, announced they would temporarily close for the day on Wednesday.