Barely two days after receiving the green light from Washington, awaited for months, kyiv launched on Monday the first American long-range ATACMS missiles towards Russian territory. What the Kremlin had presented as a red line. “At 3:25 a.m., the enemy struck a site in the Bryansk region”, not far from the Ukrainian border, the Russian army communicated this Tuesday, November 19 in the morning. Five projectiles were destroyed and another damaged by Russian anti-aircraft defenses, according to the Kremlin. According to CNN, howeveran arsenal of Russian weapons would have been hit by these missiles.
The shootings were finally confirmed by a Ukrainian official speaking on condition of anonymity, according to AFP. At a press conference this Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky neither confirmed nor denied the shots, reiterating that his country now had long-range weapons and was determined to use its arsenal.
Soon the use of Franco-British long-range missiles?
The decision to allow the use of the U.S. Army’s Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, inside Russia has been under scrutiny for months by the United States, with some Army officials fearing an escalation . Before being granted this Sunday, November 17. The resolution was adopted at a crucial moment in the war that has lasted almost three years: in recent weeks, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have continued to push back the front line against an exhausted Ukrainian army, by bombing simultaneously the country’s electricity infrastructure with the aim of disabling Ukraine’s electricity grid.
ATACMS are supersonic ballistic missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers. They can carry a warhead containing around 170 kilograms of explosives. ATACMS therefore now allows Ukraine to strike further into Russia than any other missile at its disposal. Ukraine also has the Franco-British-made Storm Shadow missile, which has a range of around 250 kilometers. But the United Kingdom and France have so far refused permission for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia.
Russia expands the scope of use of its nuclear weapon
Russia immediately promised this Tuesday an “appropriate” response to the attack on its territory, believing that the conflict was moving into “a new phase”, also announcing that the possibilities of using nuclear weapons were thus expanded. On the 1000th day of the invasion of Ukraine, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, invited Westerners to “read the entirety” of the new Russian nuclear doctrine, made official on Tuesday by Vladimir Putin. This now considers the aggression of any non-nuclear state – but with the participation of a nuclear country – as a joint attack against Russia. A clear reference to Ukraine and the United States. “A new demonstration of the irresponsible rhetoric that Russia has been displaying for two years,” a White House spokesperson in Washington responded to AFP.