Britain offers long-range weapons to Ukraine

A DAY after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to attack new targets if Western nations supplied Ukraine with long-range missile systems, Britain announced on Monday (Jun 6) that it would join the United States in providing the advanced weapons to help Ukraine hold off Russia’s assault in the east.

“As Russia’s tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in announcing that Britain would supply rocket systems that can hit targets up to 80 km away.

President Joe Biden said last week that the United States would soon deliver a precision rocket system with a similar range, far beyond what Ukraine currently has in its arsenal, as the fighting in eastern Ukraine increasingly becomes an artillery war.

Russia’s artillery advantage has been on display in the seesaw battle for Sievierodonetsk, a city that is key to controlling the entire eastern region of Donbas. Russian forces seized a large part of the city last week, after weeks of intense bombardment, but Ukrainian forces have clawed back ground in recent days in pitched street battles. On Monday, the Russians ramped up artillery attacks and erased some Ukrainian gains, Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor, said in an interview on television.

As Russia presses its campaign to seize all of Donbas, the longer-range, precision Western rockets could dent Moscow’s advantage. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, questioned whether the Ukrainian government could restrain itself as promised from using the weapons to strike targets inside Russia. The longer the range of weapons provided to Ukraine, he said at a news conference Monday, the farther back Russia will push Ukraine’s army. NYT