Britain ‘should let Ukraine use Storm Shadow missiles in Russia’

Ukrainian officers fighting in the Kursk offensive have implored Britain to green-light the use of Storm Shadow missiles to strike targets deep into Russia.

Deploying the British long-range rockets would allow Kyiv’s forces to sever vital supply lines by striking key infrastructure up to 150 miles across the Russian border, Dmytro Lantushenko, the captain of a mortar brigade involved in the Kusk incursion declared yesterday.

‘Those who are able to control their supply flows can maximise the use of their forces… If we had Storm Shadows we would be able to strike logistics hubs and railways and disrupt those lines,’ he told the Times. 

British-made weaponry has reportedly been used to great effect by Kyiv’s troops in their foray into Russia already.

Several Challenger-2 tanks are believed to have forged across the border as part of the invasion force – though Russian military bloggers gloated yesterday that drones had successfully destroyed one of the British-made vehicles used in the offensive. 

Lantushenko’s pleas for Storm Shadow missiles came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed drones are simply not enough to destroy key Russian military infrastructure and hammer home his advantage in Kursk. 

‘Our Ukrainian drones work exactly as they should, but unfortunately, there are things that cannot be done with drones alone,’ the Ukrainian president said in his nightly address Wednesday.

‘We need other weapons – missiles… long-range decisions for Ukraine. This must be done. The bolder our partners’ decisions, the less Putin will be able to do about it.’

Newest NATO member Sweden declared yesterday morning that Ukraine has the right to defend itself both inside and outside its territory, with Kyiv‘s Western allies seemingly supportive of the incursion in Kursk.

But approving the use of long-range missiles on Russian soil would signify a major shift from British, US and European governments who have thus far provided weaponry to Kyiv on the proviso they are not used for offensive strikes in Russia. 

Vladimir Putin and top-ranking Russian officials have trumpeted incessantly that they would consider any Western country to have directly entered the conflict should its weapons be used to attack Russian land, sparking fears that such a move could trigger the descent into World War III. 

However, Taras Kuzio, a professor of political science at the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, posited that the assault on Kursk has shown that the fear of crossing Russian ‘red lines’ that could lead to nuclear escalation ‘is a myth’. 

Sir Keir Starmer told reporters en route to Washington for NATO‘s 75th-anniversary summit in July that decisions on the use of UK-supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles were for the Ukrainian armed forces to make.

Many believed this indicated that Kyiv had been granted permission to use the missiles to strike targets on Russian soil. 

But Downing Street was later forced to clarify that, although Ukraine was permitted to use UK-supplied weapons in Russia, the deployment of the long-range missiles had not been granted.

‘There has been no change in UK Government policy, under Article 51 of the UN Charter Ukraine has a clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks, that does not preclude operations inside Russia,’ a government spokesperson said, specifying that Storm Shadows were not to be used. 

Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk appeared to have stalled somewhat earlier this week, with Russian commanders scrambling to pile fresh units into the battle on the ground while bombing Ukrainian positions from the air with Su-34 jets. 

But by Wednesday, Ukrainian officials claimed to have regained the initiative and claimed to have captured almost as much Russian land in Kursk as Russian forces took in Ukraine in the last seven months, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Kyiv claims its troops are now controlling at least 74 settlements, including the strategic town of Sudzha, and have advanced almost 30 miles into some parts of Kursk.

Hundreds of Russian prisoners have also been captured, blindfolded and ferried away in trucks. 

Kyiv could use those men to bargain for the return of hundreds of imprisoned Ukrainians in future prisoner exchanges, with Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets declaring Wednesday that his Russian counterpart, Tatyana Moskalkova, had initiated a conversation about that very subject – the first time such a request has come from Moscow.

Images from the battlefield showing columns of destroyed Russian weaponry are reminiscent of Ukraine’s successful counteroffensives in 2022 in Kherson and Kharkiv. 

The photos also offer a sorely needed boost to national morale that deflated after the failed 2023 summer counteroffensive and months of recent territorial losses in the east.

Matthew Savill, the Director of Military Sciences at the RUSI think tank, told MailOnline there could be as many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops now in Russia, with upper estimates from other sources putting the figure as high as 12,000.

‘There’s evidence of Ukrainian forces from at least four different brigades – 22nd and 88th Mechanised and 80th and 82nd Air Assault, and possibly more – now involved in the offensive in Kursk.

‘These brigades are using Western-provided equipment like infantry fighting vehicles as well as Soviet-era tanks.

‘It’s hard to judge numbers, but it might be enough for around a division – perhaps 10,000 – given the spread of fighting now underway.

‘But we should be very cautious about determining exact size, because units are being rotated, and the presence of elements doesn’t tell us the whole unit has been deployed.

‘That ambiguity suits the Ukrainians.’

Kyiv was forced to pull some troops from the hottest parts of the front line in eastern Ukraine in order to launch the Kursk offensive, raising fears that key battles along the frontline could be lost. 

Ukrainian commanders have said they hope the incursion will also force Russia to do the same, or at the very least deploy reserves that were intended to bolster attacks at other parts of the 620-mile front line. 

So far, Moscow’s focus in the Donetsk region seemingly remains unchanged, with fighters in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson reporting that Russian forces had if anything upped the intensity of their attacks.

‘There is no way Russia will stop its actions in the parts of the front line where they are tactically succeeding,’ Ukrainian military expert Konstantin Mashovets said. 

‘There, they will push and squeeze until their last man is standing, no matter what.’

But he said the push into Kursk might force the Kremlin to pull reserves ‘from the parts of the front line that are of secondary importance.’

‘The stretching of the front line for us is also stretching the front line for the enemy,’ said the commander of the 14th Regiment of Unmanned Drones, who uses the call sign Charlie, after he participated in the opening stage of the offensive. 

‘Only we have prepared for this operation in detail. The Russians were not prepared for this operation at all.’