Russia Shoots Down Missiles – Russian officials said in a report that on Tuesday, April 30, Ukraine had attacked Crimea with U.S.-produced Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) in an attempt to pierce Russian air defenses of the annexed Peninsula but that six missiles had been shot down by the Russian forces.
Washington secretly shipped the long-range missiles to Kyiv as part of a $300 million military aid package for Ukraine that U.S. President Joe Biden approved on March 12, as per the statement of a U.S. official.
Whether to send the ATACMS missiles with a range up to 300 km was a subject of debate within the Biden administration for months. Mid-range ATACMS were supplied last September.
In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry said six ATACMS had been shot down, but it did not say where. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed head of Crimea, said ATACMS missiles were shot down over the peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Further, the ministry said that “ten Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, six ATACMS tactical missiles manufactured by the United States, and two guided ‘Hammer’ aircraft bombs manufactured by France were shot down by air defenses.”
In addition to this, the Russian lawmaker Leonid Ivlev, who once served in the Soviet Air Force, addressed that Ukraine struck at air bases in Crimea with 12 ATACMS and added that attacks could increase ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a new term next week.
Ivlev told the RIA news agency that “their target is airfields. The missiles were destroyed by air defenses. Moreover, he said Ukraine was trying to pierce the air defense shield over Crimea to then strike at strategically important facilities.
According to the reports released by the officials, the ATACMS missiles were used for the first time in the early hours of April 17, launched against a Russian airfield in Crimea that was about 103 miles from the Ukrainian front lines, a U.S. official told Reuters in Washington.
There were also concerns that Ukraine would use them to attack targets deep inside Russia, a step that could lead to an escalation of the war towards a direct confrontation between Russia and the United States.
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