UK’s top diplomat also pledges £3 billion of annual military help to Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes.’
Ukraine has the “right” to use British-supplied weapons to strike Russia inside its own territory, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on a trip to Kyiv.
In an interview with Reuters, Cameron said it was up to Ukraine to decide how U.K. weapons are used.
Asked if that included targets inside Russia, he said: “Ukraine has that right. Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it’s defending itself.”
This is the counter-escalation rhetoric from the west, in response to new evidence of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine.
Ukraine has been striking hundreds of kilometers into Russia already, but with domestically made light prop planes turned into flying suicide bombs. Thats way wayyyy cheaper than a multi-million Taurus/StormShadow, but super vulnerable to air defense unlike said cruise missiles.
Allowing Ukraine to strike with supplied weapons could have a big effect on battlefield outcomes depending on how it’s applied. I think any hope of UKR air dominance is years away, but blunting Russia ability to muster and sortie glide/hypersonic attacks would be significant today. Crimea (and the Kerch bridge) is useless for now, ammo dumps and staging areas are too low value, and the naval forces are already being attritted and denied a use via sea drones.
It doesn’t even need to be applied, saying it can happen and showing it once forces a massive logistical cost on Russia to protect itself by moving weak points further back, extending supply lines even more, or concentrating under any anti missile defences.
Yup, just like when HIMARS was feasting on Russian ammo dumps and AAA when initially introduced - but now at much further ranges
Why would you say that the Kerch bridge is useless for now? I’d think that cutting 50% of the supply lines into occupied territory would have a massive impact no matter when you did it.
Useless as an objective. They threw +2 StormShadows at it previously during the counteroffensive prelude, when retaking the land route to Crimea was the main thrust. Now it’ll frustrate local logistics, instead of cutting off resupply.
Curb stomping air bases or Russian MIC factories has a universal effect across the front.