Ukraine says it launched its “most massive” attack of the war yet, launching over a dozen Western-supplied advanced cruise missiles and over 100 drones at targets deep inside Russia to strike energy, chemical, and weapon facilities.
Fires were reported at Russian chemical and energy plants overnight Monday into Tuesday this week, with the Kremlin asserting it had shot down waves of missiles and drones. Russia vowed retaliation for the strike, which they said included eight British-made Storm Shadow bunker-buster cruise missiles and six U.S.-made ATACMS cruise missiles.
Per the Kremlin’s assertion, they successfully shot down all of these missiles, 12 over Bryansk and two further Storm Shadows over the Black Sea. Russia also claims it downed multiple dozens of drones over regions ringing Moscow. The Russian Ministry of Defence vowed revenge, stating: “The actions by the Kiev regime supported by Western handlers will trigger retaliation”.
Russia claimed in shooting down all Ukrainian-launched weapons, there had been “no casualties or destruction”. Yet fires were reported at several important facilities, and Ukrainian intelligence asserted it had landed blows in what it called the “most massive” attack of the war, claiming strikes nearly 700 miles beyond the Ukrainian-Russian border, and well beyond Moscow.
WW3 Watch: Russia Launches First ICBM in Anger Says Kyiv, Strikes Ukrainian City https://t.co/0IXkEhoMan
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 21, 2024
Wires service Reuters claimed a source in the Ukrainian intelligence services — who often coordinate these long-range strikes — had claimed a hit on a major Russian airbase, Engels. The home base for some of Russia’s aerial nuclear forces, it is alleged the strike hit a munitions dump of “guided bombs and missiles”. Also said to have been struck was a chemical plant in the Tula Oblast to the south of Moscow, a gas storage tank in the Tatarstan Oblast east of Moscow, a chemical plant in Bryansk Oblast on the Ukrainian border, and an oil refinery on the Volga.
Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied cruise missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory has been one of the main points of contention for its Western backers for the latter years of the conflict, as leaders expressed concerns allowing Kyiv to use the weapons beyond its own borders would be escalatory. After months of stonewalling, the U.S. government of President Joe Biden suddenly and unexpectedly signed off on the weapons shortly after the national elections.
Russia’s response to the weapons being used for the first time was initially one of outrage, with a torrent of words from the Kremlin followed by the test of what Moscow called a new, experimental ballistic missile. Although the missile was launched at a Ukrainian city, it was launched without a nuclear or even a conventional warhead, any damage being solely down to the kinetic energy of the missile casing plunging down to earth at enormous speed.
Putin has claimed the weapon resembles a new unstoppable Russian threat, even if other recent new weapons have also come with boasts of invulnerability that subsequently proved to the overwrought.
