By KYIV. May 11 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The UK has provided Ukraine with long-range stealthy Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which are mostly air-launched weapons, CNN reported on Thursday, citing unnamed Western officials.
“The United Kingdom has supplied Ukraine with multiple Storm Shadow cruise missiles, giving Ukrainian forces a new long-range strike capability in advance of a highly anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces,” the TV channel reports.
According to one of the sources, the Ukrainian side assured London that it would not use Storm Shadow to strike deep into Russia.
The missile is “a game-changer in terms of range,” a senior U.S. military official told CNN, and gives Kyiv the capability it has been asking for since the start of the war.
The range of Storm Shadow is about 250 km, not much less than that of the U.S. tactical ballistic missiles ATACMS, which the United States has previously refused to supply to Ukraine. CNN recalls that the radius of use of American weapons, so far transferred to Kyiv, does not exceed 78.8 km.
On May 9, The Washington Post reported that the British Ministry of Defense suggested that the International Support Fund for Ukraine consider supplying Kyiv with strike weapons with a range of up to 300 km.
