The cruise missiles supplied by France to Ukraine are equivalent to those already supplied by the United Kingdom and increase Kiev’s ability to hit targets in Russia.
These cruise missiles – jointly developed by France as SCALP and the UK as Storm Shadow – they can be launched from a fighter jet and London had already announced their deployment to Ukraine to help Kiev resist the Russian invasion.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced this on Tuesday, on the first day of the NATO summit France would supply SCALP missiles to Ukraine, in a decision criticized by the Kremlin, which threatened to take “countermeasures”.
This Tuesday, a French military source assured that the Scalp was already in Ukraine, allowing Kiev to take advantage of its range of more than 250 kilometers, giving it access to areas in the east controlled by Russian forces.
“It is essential that Ukrainian forces disrupt Russian logistics and command and control,” explained Ivan Klyszcz, a researcher at the International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS) in Estonia, to explain the relevance of these weapons.
Kiev has been asking for these types of weapons for several months, in an effort to break Western countries’ resistance to supplying pull-pull weapons.
With these missiles, the headquarters of the Russian Navy on the Black Sea, located in Sevastopol, Crimea, is now within range of the Ukrainians, as well as several Russian cities close to the border.
London insists that these missiles should “enable Ukraine to repel Russian forces stationed on Ukraine’s sovereign territory,” said British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace.
When French President Emmanuel Macron recently said he had sent these missiles, he said they would be delivered “while preserving the clarity and coherence” of Western doctrine, to allow Ukraine to “defend its territory”.
Source: DN
