This comes despite a threat on Sunday from Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to bomb fresh targets if long-range missiles from the US were delivered to Kyiv.
Britain is to supply long-range rocket artillery to Ukraine.
This comes despite a threat on Sunday from Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to bomb fresh targets if long-range missiles from the US were delivered to Kyiv.
The Guardian UK reports that Britain will send a handful of tracked M270 multiple launch rocket systems, which can hit targets up to 50 miles away, in the hope they can disrupt the concentrated Russian artillery that has been pounding cities in eastern Ukraine.
Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, argued the decision to ship the rocket launchers was justified because “as Russia’s tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine”. The move risks further provoking an already irritated Kremlin.
Before the British announcement, Putin told Rossiya state television that Russia would retaliate further if the US went through with the delivery of Himars rocket artillery that the White House promised last week.
“We will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting,” said the Russian leader, who has been closely involved with operational military decisions throughout the three months-plus of the war. He did not specify what those targets were.
In the small hours of Sunday morning, Russian cruise missiles struck a railway depot in the eastern Dniprovsky suburb of Kyiv. Ukraine said the strike hit a rail car repair works; Moscow said it had destroyed tanks sent by eastern European countries to Ukraine.
It was the first time anywhere in the capital has been hit for over five weeks. One person was hospitalised, and a plume of smoke rose and was visible from high points in the capital.
Five cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 bombers, one of which was intercepted, Ukraine’s air force said, in an attack that represented a change of approach on the part of Russian forces. Kyiv was last hit on 28 April.
Russia’s ministry of defence claimed it was targeting an arsenal of T-72 tanks that had been delivered from eastern European countries, suggesting it now wants to target the supply of western arms. But Ukrainian officials said the statement was false.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, the chairman of the board of Ukrainian Railways, said: “There are no such tanks at the plant, as well as no military equipment. There are only cars that we repair. These carriages we need for export – these are, in particular, grain carriages.”
The UK, in conjunction with the US and other western nations, began the war by promising only to supply “defensive weaponry” to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion. But as Russia has made gains in the east and the south of the country, western countries have gradually sent more lethal arms.