These weapons are part of a larger new component of US military assistance to Ukraine, worth a total of $700 million.
With that decision, President Joe Biden modified what he had said on Monday. “We are not going to send rocket systems to Ukraine that can reach Russia,” he told reporters that day. However, the adverse situation for Urania on the eastern front, which threatens an early fall of the entire region into Russian hands, and pressure from his counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky led him to change his position.
“We are not encouraging or allowing Ukraine to attack beyond its borders,” said the Democratic leader. “We don’t want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia,” he added.
kyiv asks for more
Zelensky is now pushing to receive missiles capable of hitting targets 300 kilometers away. “Foreign arms orders from kyiv are provocations aimed at drawing the West into the conflict,” warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Meanwhile, the number two of this, Sergey Riabkov warned that “any delivery of weapons that continues or increases, reinforces the risk” of spillover from the conflict.
The official added that “it is evident that the United States, at the head of a group of countries, is deliberately engaged in arming the Ukrainian regime. We rate those plans as very negative.”
Explanation
The White House justified its turn by the fact that Ukraine “gave guarantees” that it will only use the new weapons to attack Russian targets inside its territory, behind the front line, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
“It is Russia that attacks Ukraine, not the other way around. To be clear, the best way to prevent escalation is for Russia to stop the aggression and the war it has launched,” she stated.
Joining him was NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who noted that “as for the weapons systems that we are providing, the Ukrainians have given us guarantees that they will not use them against targets on Russian territory.”
However, the Putin government does not believe in such promises. “No,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, when asked if he believed Zelensky. “In order to believe him, there should be a previous experience in which his promises have been kept. But that experience does not exist, ”he detailed.
Climbing
Both Ukraine and Russia already operate Multiple Launch Systems (MLRS), but the Himars have far superior range and accuracy. It is a modernized version of the M142 Himars system, mounted on an agile wheeled system and lighter than the tracked version of the M270 MLRS developed in the 1970s.
The Himars system will have an average range of 80 kilometers with a pre-charged battery of six 227mm guided missiles (M270s have two), or alternatively a load of ATACMS tactical missiles.
However, the United States will not supply the ATACMS, which has a range of 300 kilometers, as Zelensky claims.
The delivered system could allow the Ukrainian Army to attack Russian targets behind enemy lines and from positions further away and better protected from Russia’s own long-range weapons.
Another of its characteristics is that it can be operated by a small group and the assembly of a new load of missiles is done in minutes, without the help of other vehicles.
The GPS-guided missiles fired by the Himars, on the other hand, have a range nearly double that of the M777 howitzers, recently delivered to Ukraine.
Source: Ambito
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