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Ukraine has launched British-made Storm Shadow missiles at military targets in Russia for the first time, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The attack follows Ukraine’s first use of US long-range Atacms missiles on Russian soil on Tuesday, after authorisation from US President Joe Biden.
A western official briefed on the strike said that multiple missiles had been fired at at least one Russian military target.
A Russian pro-war military blog on social media app Telegram posted photos on Wednesday of what it said were fragments from a Storm Shadow missile, including engravings indicating it as such.
The blog said the fragments had landed near the village of Marino, a village in the Kursk region. Alexei Smirnov, the local governor, said that Russian air defences had shot down two Ukrainian missiles.
In reference to the posts, Yuriy Ignat, a Ukrainian air force official, wrote on Facebook that “there was a ‘strong storm’ in Kursk region”.
Kyiv has been pleading for months with western allies to use their long-range weapons to hit Russian territory as Ukrainian troops struggle to hold on to land they have occupied in the Kursk region.
Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadows and France’s equivalent Scalp missiles was discussed in informal conversations among western officials on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro this week, according to a person present during the conversations.
Sending “a clear message on North Korean soldiers [who have recently been deployed to assist Russian forces] made a lot of sense”, the person said.
Biden’s decision to authorise the use of Atacms came two months before president-elect Donald Trump, who has said he will swiftly bring the conflict to an end, re-enters office.
The White House has been nervous about possible escalation of the conflict. Putin has previously said that a move to allow the use of long-range western weapons in Russia would essentially mean Nato countries were directly at war with Moscow.
On Tuesday, Russia officially adjusted its military doctrine to lower the threshold to use nuclear weapons.
Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence and the UK Foreign Office all declined to comment, citing “operational reasons”.
But ahead of travelling to the G20 summit, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the international community had to “double down” in its support for Kyiv, pointing to the deployment of North Korean troops alongside Russians as a serious escalation.
“We cannot allow [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to win,” Starmer said. “I think that would be extremely bad for security in Europe, I think with the North Korean element it will be extremely bad for security in the Indo-Pacific.”
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defence minister, told the FT that the authorisation to use the British missiles would not be “game-changers” on their own.
“No weapon is a game-changer,” he said. But he said that if they were deployed in combination with other arms, “these weapons are absolutely critical”.
It is unclear how many Storm Shadows have been given to Ukraine and how many it has remaining in its stocks. But Zagorodnyuk said Kyiv “may not need that many, if the targeting is done well and the overall planning is done well”.
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