Thanks to US weapons, the region Russia called an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is now entirely within range of Ukrainian forces.
, after six months of Congressional delay, is having an impact. In particular, the arrival of ATACMS ballistic missiles, with a range of 300km, means that Ukraine can now hit any target in Russian-occupied Crimea, with deadly effect.
However, to the exasperation of the Ukrainians, Mr Biden has still to lift his ban on hitting targets elsewhere in Russia. For an indication of what Ukraine might achieve if it no longer had to fight with one hand tied behind its back, the effectiveness of its campaign in Crimea shows the way.
On April 17, an ATACMS strike on Dzhankoi airbase in the north-east of Crimea damaged helicopters, an S-400 battery and a command-and-control centre. A month later, on the evening of May 15, a large-scale ATACMS strike on an airbase at Belbek near Sevastopol destroyed four planes as well as an S-400 air-defence radar and at least two launchers.
Significantly, Russia’s much-vaunted and very expensive S-400 air-defence system has been found wanting. Mr Lange says the Ukrainians are using decoy drones to make the Russians light up their radars and reveal their positions. The targeting data is immediately fed to the ATACMS launch crews. Within six minutes the missiles, virtually undetectable because of their speed and low radar cross-section, are hitting their targets.
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