The United States has authorised the Ukrainian Armed Forces to strike targets in Crimea with long-range ATACMS missiles, which were recently transferred to Kyiv.
Source. Senior Pentagon officials told The New York Times.
The US military department called the occupied peninsula the centre of Russian air and ground forces, "where Russia has had a relatively safe haven until now". Therefore, the purpose of strikes using ATACMS systems will be to "put more pressure on Crimea," the Pentagon spokesman said.
In addition, ATACMS can be used to strike behind the lines of the Russian army in other occupied regions of Ukraine. In this case, the missiles would target Russia's supply hubs in the southeast of the country, the Pentagon explained.
According to the NYT, Ukraine received a version of ATACMS with a range of up to 300 km. The number of missiles transferred was not disclosed. Last autumn, the US sent Kyiv missiles of this system with a range of 165 km.
Background. Earlier it became known that the United States secretly transferred more than 100 ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. Some of them have already been used by the Ukrainian military, in particular during the attack on Crimea on 17 April. At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced a strike on the airfield in Dzhankoy in the north of the peninsula, but did not specify what weapons were used. Two days later, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that air defence systems had shot down three ATACMS missiles over the Black Sea.
The Pentagon explained that President Joe Biden had approved the delivery of the missiles back in February. At Ukraine's request, this was not announced publicly. The White House confirmed this information.