Kyiv wants to launch Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s heartlands as ‘demonstration’ attacks

Ukraine wants permission from the west to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to destroy targets deep inside Russia, believing this could force Moscow into negotiating an end to the fighting.

Senior figures in Kyiv have suggested that using the Anglo-French weapons in a “demonstration attack” will show the Kremlin that military sites near the capital itself could be vulnerable to direct strikes.

The thinking, according to a senior government official, is that Russia will consider negotiating only if it believes Ukraine had the ability “to threaten Moscow and St Petersburg”. This is a high-risk strategy, however, and does not so far have the support of the US.

Ukraine has been lobbying for months to be allowed to use Storm Shadow against targets inside Russia, but with little success. Nevertheless, as its army struggles on the eastern front, there is a growing belief that its best hope lies in counter-attack.

  • @ricecakeEnglish
    27•19 days ago

    Eh, it’s been old equipment and concripts for a bit now, but that’s not what the sent at first.

    Trying to take a country using your C team and old hardware and then scaling up if things go badly is a radically bad strategy. It’s a great way to lose your C team, and then send more competent soldiers to fight against a prepared and well defensed enemy.

    That might be what Russia did, but if so it’s a show of incompetence about in line with everything else we’ve seen and not some “better slow down” signal.

      • @ricecakeEnglish
        10•19 days ago

        Attributing loosing or making preposterous strategic mistakes to some sort of 5D chess is a weird choice to make.

        I don’t know why so many of you people have such a hard time accepting that the popular conception of Russia as an Eastern counterpart to the US was inaccurate. Turns out that if you consistently invest less in your military equipment and personnel, you have a less capable military. It’s been 40 years since their expenditures have been comparable, and quite frankly it shows.

        Using your old equipment for an invasion would actually be a pretty novel strategy. Ukraine consistently used the best equipment available to them. That that was leftover NATO hardware doesn’t mean Ukraine was choosing to hold the good stuff in reserve.

        If they’re trying to use a “let the reservists die and then send in the competent soldiers” strategy, it doesn’t seem to be going very well. They’re somehow not holding the territory they took very well, and churning through a lot of what was presumably reserve hardware.

        Failing to execute a gulf war 1, and so deciding to chill in a Vietnam situation for … Some reason … for an indeterminate period of time is just not a strategy that any sane strategist would pick.

        If Russia has the ability to just handwave their way to victory if things got too rough, they’ve done a pretty terrible job of demonstrating it.
        I honestly can’t comprehend what you might have seen of this whole affair that would make you think they had that ability, beyond clinging to the notion that a former superpower must still be a superpower.
        They just don’t have the economy or the equipment to be able to afford to burn through endless waves of soldiers like you seem to think they’re intentionally doing.
        They didn’t even get air superiority, which is just embarrassing.

      • CethinEnglish
        5•18 days ago

        Just a heads up, you betray your Russian supporting roots saying the Ukraine so openly. I’m assuming you accidentally typed it by habit, because most of the time you addressed them properly, but they aren’t just some regional dependant of Russia. They are an independent nation.

        Russia is losing its troops and equipment. That’s why they aren’t using modern stuff anymore. You can find pictures of the modern stuff destroyed on the battlefield if you’re interested. They sent it in. They just got held back and their equipment was lost. It’s not a mystery. It’s publicly viewable to anyone curious.