Just days after the Biden administration granted Ukraine permission to fire US weapons at Russia, kyiv took advantage of its new latitude and attacked a military facility across the border using an American-made artillery system, according to a member of Parliament. from Ukraine.
Yehor Chernev, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee, said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had destroyed Russian missile launchers with a strike in the Belgorod region, about 20 miles inside Russia. Ukrainian forces used a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, he said.
It was the first time a Ukrainian official publicly acknowledged that Ukraine had used American weapons to fire on Russia since President Biden lifted a ban on such attacks. For months, the ban had been a red line that the Biden administration would not cross for fear of rising tensions with a nuclear-armed nation.
The Ukrainian military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In granting permission last week, the United States imposed limitations, saying the weapons could only be used on Russian territory near northeastern Ukraine and for defensive purposes. Chernev, in text messages, said Ukraine destroyed the S-300 and S-400 missile systems, without specifying how many. Russia has used the systems, initially designed to shoot down aircraft, to bomb the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which is just 45 miles from Belgorod.
The HIMARS used by Ukraine is an American-made long-range rocket system that can fire from beyond the range of most of Ukraine’s non-Western weaponry.
Chernev’s account of the strike could not be independently confirmed. But on Monday videos emerged of the consequences of the attack on the S-300 and S-400 systems. Satellite images and social media posts suggest there were multiple attacks on Russian territory over the weekend.
Chernev, a former member of the Ukrainian military, is also the head of Ukraine’s delegation to NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, a role that has led him to participate in discussions with Western partners over the supply and use of Western weapons.
A video from a Russian Telegram channel showed burning Russian military equipment and a plume of gray smoke after an attack on Sunday. The video, which was verified by The New York Times, was recorded on the outskirts of Belgorod, and satellite images captured there by Planet Labs show smoke billowing from what appear to be destroyed vehicles. At least one of the throwers was in an elevated position at the time of the attack.
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on the Russian military and modern warfare, said the range and precision of the attack on the missile launch systems suggested the weapon used was American.
“Given the range, target type, munitions availability, and change in Biden administration policy,” he wrote in a text message, “I believe it is likely that this attack was carried out with HIMARS.”
Russian bloggers, researchers analyzing satellite images and battlefield images and the Russian Defense Ministry have reported multiple cases of attacks inside Russia with US rockets since Thursday, when the Biden administration approved their use.
On Saturday, Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for Russian state television, shared photos of what were presented as fragments of American guided rockets found on Russian territory. It was not possible to independently verify when or where the fragments were found.
Military analysts had been watching when and how Ukraine would use American weapons on Russian territory.
For weeks, Ukraine had been aggressively lobbying its Western allies to allow it to use its weapons to attack inside Russia. He said Russian troops were massing on the border and preparing attacks on Ukraine with impunity. And he cited the urgency of being able to attack planes that launch so-called gliding bombs from inside Russian territory and that rise towards targets in Ukraine, as well as attack military bases, command points and ammunition depots in Russia.
“We use every meeting and every day to give our warriors more possibilities,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wrote in a Telegram post on Tuesday. “I appreciate all the partners who help us in the way we need and on time.”
Military analysts say the Ukrainians’ new ability to strike in Russia will help curb Moscow’s cross-border attacks.
“We can now attack Russian troops at the training stage, which reduces the likelihood of preparing new offensives” elsewhere on the border, said Mykhailo Samus, director of the Center for Army Studies, Conversion and Disarmament, a think tank organization. military research. in kyiv.
Russia has repeatedly warned Ukraine’s Western allies that allowing attacks inside Russia would carry serious consequences. “We would like to warn American officials against miscalculations that can have fatal consequences,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov said Monday, according to the Interfax news agency. “For some unclear reasons, they underestimate the severity of the response they may receive.”
Russia has not specified what those consequences would be, although its president, Vladimir V. Putin, last week made a veiled threat against small European countries, noting that they are “very densely populated.”
Chernev’s confirmation that American weapons had been used to attack inside Russia is the only one Ukraine has given so far, perhaps out of concern about adding fuel to Russian propaganda and stoking further bellicosity on Russia’s part. Ukraine is also preparing for a diplomatic initiative in Switzerland later this month to present its plan for a solution to the war.
A spokesman for the National Security Council, John F. Kirby, said the United States will not reconsider its policy prohibiting deeper strikes into Russia in the coming weeks. The administration also banned Ukraine from firing a more powerful and longer-range rocket, ATACMS, at Russia. Ukrainian officials are pushing for expanded permits to fire on Russia.
“All Russian troops in the border region must be destroyed to not allow them to cross” the border, said Samus, the Ukrainian military analyst. Exactly how the weapons are used is unlikely to be publicly disclosed, he said. “There are official positions of Ukraine and the United States. Everything else is the fog of war.”