Kyiv wants to launch Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s heartlands as ‘demonstration’ attacks
Ukraine wants permission from the west to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to destroy targets deep inside Russia, believing this could force Moscow into negotiating an end to the fighting.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking on the country’s independence day, said Kyiv had no choice but to retaliate against Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched “913 days ago” in February 2022 – and in particular against Moscow’s use of aerial bombs and ballistic missiles against civilians.
Kyiv and other major cities in Ukraine are routinely targeted by Russian missiles and drones. This week, Oleksandr Syrskyi, the chief of the country’s military, said that since the start of the year, Moscow had attacked Ukraine with 9,590 missiles and 13,997 drones, hitting 6,203 civilian targets and 5,676 military ones.and now claims control of 1,250 sq km of Russian territory, though its pace of advance slowed last week.
US officials told news website Politico that they believed Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles might not be accurate enough over great distances, and that the Russian jet fighters that launched glide bombs into Ukrainian frontline areas were largely based out of range of the missiles, as a precaution.
Russia is considered to believe it can break Ukraine though attrition, and is estimated by Kyiv to have about 600,000 troops inside the country. Capturing Pokrovsk in the Donbas ahead of the US presidential election in November would be designed to demonstrate to a new occupant of the White House that Ukraine was fighting a losing battle.
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