As a result of Russia’s threats against the West, the United Kingdom is sending its first long-range missiles to Ukraine.
Ben Wallace said the M270 multiple-launch rocket system will help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. The government has not confirmed how many weapons will be sent, but the BBC understands it will be three initially. The decision comes after the US announced last week it was also supplying a rocket system.
The multiple-launch rocket system can fire 12 surface-to-surface missiles within a minute and can strike targets within 50 miles (80km) with pinpoint accuracy – far further than the artillery Ukraine currently possesses.
Mr Wallace said the UK was taking a leading role in supplying Ukrainian troops with the “vital weapons they need to defend their country from unprovoked invasion”. He said: “As Russia’s tactics change, so must our support to Ukraine.
“These highly capable multiple-launch rocket systems will enable our Ukrainian friends to better protect themselves against the brutal use of long-range artillery, which Putin’s forces have used indiscriminately to flatten cities.”
The UK and US have led the way in supplying weapons to Ukraine, but giving it advanced long range rockets marks a significant shift, said the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale. It is also a recognition that Ukraine is struggling to compete against Russia’s vast artillery arsenal, he added.
Last week, Washington said it would supply four HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine – following receipt of guarantees they would be used for defensive purposes only and not to strike targets inside Russia. The same restriction applies to the use of the UK’s M270 system.
In an interview on Russian state TV on Sunday, Mr Putin said: “In general, all this fuss about additional arms supplies, in my opinion, has only one goal – to drag out the armed conflict as long as possible.”
The Russian leader said that if missiles with longer ranges did arrive in Ukraine, his country would “draw appropriate conclusions” and “strike at those targets that we are not striking yet”.
The warning came as explosions shook parts of Kyiv on Sunday in the first assault on the capital city for weeks, while fierce fighting for control of key towns and cities in the eastern Donbas region continues.
Russia refocused its military efforts on the Donbas at the end of March after pulling back from the Kyiv region. Some of the fiercest fighting is currently in the eastern city of Severodonetsk. Capturing the city would deliver the Luhansk region to Russian forces and their local separatist allies, who also control much of neighbouring Donetsk. The two regions form the heavily industrial Donbas.
Ukrainian troops have beaten back Russian forces to control half of a flashpoint eastern city, local officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the front lines to support his country’s “true heroes”.
As the see-saw battle raged on for the strategically important city of Severodonetsk — the largest in the Lugansk region not under Russian control — more help was promised from abroad.
The United Kingdom said it would follow the United States and send long-range missile systems to Ukraine, defying warnings from Russian President Vladimir Putin against supplying Kyiv with the advanced weapons.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24.
Fighting since April has been concentrated in the east of the country, where Russian forces have made slow but steady advances after being beaten back from other parts of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv.
Ukraine’s gains in Severodonetsk, announced by regional governor Sergiy Gaiday, would represent a significant advance by Kyiv’s troops, who earlier appeared on the verge of being driven out of the city.
“The Armed Forces have cleared half of Severodonetsk and are moving forward,” Gaiday posted on Telegram.
However, he warned in a video in the same post that a major new Russian push on the industrial hub appeared imminent.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he had visited front-line troops in the eastern Donbas region to the city of Lysychansk and the town of Soledar.
Britain and the US have been among the leading nations giving arms to support Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.
The UK has also delivered more than 5,000 next generation light anti-tank weapons – known as Nlaw – which analysts believe have been critical to Ukraine driving back Russian ground assaults since the war began.
Other weapon systems delivered by the government include short-range Brimstone 1 missiles, Mastiff armored vehicles and Starstreak missile air defense systems – with the overall military support to Ukraine costing £750m so far, the government said.
Several other countries have pledged to send advanced weapons to Ukraine. Germany has promised to send its most modern air defense system – the Iris-T – to enable Ukraine to shield an entire city from Russian air attacks.
Providing support for war crimes investigations
Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, announced on Monday that a team of lawyers and police officers will assist the chief prosecutor investigating alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The offer will include a Metropolitan Police officer stationed in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands – who will provide the ICC’s prosecutor Karim Khan with greater access to British police and military expertise.
On top of this, seven lawyers experienced in international criminal law will be offered to help uncover evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine and prosecute those responsible.
The ICC has already begun an investigation that may target senior Russian officials thought to be responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
- Putin is suspected of war crimes, could he be prosecuted?
Several towns and cities around Ukraine previously occupied by Russian troops have reported atrocities and mass graves – they have withdrawn from around Kyiv and other areas they previously occupied in order to concentrate their offensive on the east.
Civilian massacres have been discovered in places like Bucha, a town near the Ukrainian capital, with people found dead in the street, having been allegedly bound, gagged and executed by retreating Russian soldiers.
Ukraine has so far reported 15,000 suspected war crimes, including Ukrainian women alleging being raped by Russian troops.
Some 600 suspects have been identified and 80 prosecutions have begun, with one tank commander already sentenced to life in prison in May, after being found guilty by a Kyiv court of shooting a 62-year-old civilian in the back.
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.
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 defense 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.
London said it had been cooperating closely with Washington. The British announcement comes a few days after the US said it would send four similar truck-mounted Himars systems. The US and UK systems are intended to be complementary. The ranges of both are far greater than any land weapons Ukraine currently has.
Like the US, the UK has sought assurances from Kyiv that the M270s would not be used to strike targets within Russia. A British defence source said the weapons will be used “to defend Ukraine, in Ukraine”. They added: “We have confidence that the weapons will be used appropriately.”
Britain did not say how many M270s it was sending, although the number is small and will be comparable to the US decision to send four Himars. Ukrainian troops will be trained on how to use the launchers in the UK, the MoD added, and Kyiv’s forces will be supplied with the appropriate rockets “at scale”.
“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin added.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy company, Energoatom, also warned on Sunday that a Russian cruise missile had come dangerously close to the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant, in the south of the country, at about 5.30am, apparently heading for Kyiv.
It said the missile “flew critically low” over the site and that Russian forces “still do not understand that even the smallest fragment of a missile that can hit a working power unit can cause a nuclear catastrophe and radiation leak”.
Elsewhere, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said that Ukrainian forces had counterattacked in Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine, “likely blunting the operational momentum Russian forces previously gained” but offered no assessment of whether the effort was pushing the invaders back.
On Saturday, Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, said his country’s forces had regained about 20% of the city in Donbas, which had been under days of attack from concentrated Russian shelling and airstrikes.
Haidai repeated that claim on Sunday, adding that eight Russians had been taken prisoner and that the occupiers had “lost a huge number of personnel”. A humanitarian headquarters in neighbouring Lysychansk had been struck with 30 shells overnight, the governor said.
Ukrainian forces were “successfully slowing down Russian operations” in Donbas and were making “effective local counterattacks in Sievierodonetsk”, said the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, overnight.
The research group, which closely monitors the fighting, said that Russia “may still be able to capture Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk” and that it appeared that “Ukrainian defences remain strong in this pivotal theatre”.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said Russia was relying on “poorly equipped and trained” separatist forces from Luhansk to conduct the clearance of the city, a tactic it said had been previously employed by Moscow’s forces in Syria. “This approach likely indicates a desire to limit casualties suffered by regular Russian forces,” it added.
One Ukrainian presidential adviser urged European nations to respond with “more sanctions, more weapons” to the strike on Kyiv – and appeared to criticise the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who had said in an interview on Friday that Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine so that a diplomatic solution could eventually be found.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the president’s office, tweeted: “While someone asks not to humiliate Russia, the Kremlin resorts to new insidious attacks. Today’s missile strikes at Kyiv have only one goal – kill as many Ukrainians as possible.”
