On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Russian troops to target Ukraine’s long-range weapons and artillery after Ukrainian forces said they used US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) against Russian targets.
“Army General Sergey Shoigu … instructed the commander to use surgical strikes and crush the enemy’s long-range missile and artillery means,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to Tass.
Last week, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian forces had used HIMARS to launch 30 strikes against Russian targets. Ukraine said the HIMARS were used to destroy two ammunition depots deep inside Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, while Russia said the strikes hit civilian infrastructure.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Ukraine has used long-range weapons “to shell the residential areas of Donbas and continue the intentional incineration of wheat fields and grain storage facilities.” As Ukraine has been using the Western-provided arms, Russia has stepped up missile attacks across Ukraine.
The HIMARS the US provided Ukraine have a range of 50 miles, although they could be outfitted with munitions to reach longer ranges. When the US sent Ukraine the HIMARS, Biden administration officials said they received “assurances” that they won’t be used to target Russian territory.
The State Department on Sunday implied that under the deal with Kyiv, Ukrainian forces could use HIMARS on Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014. When asked by Antiwar.com if the ban on Ukraine using HIMARS on Russian territory applies to Ukraine, the State Department replied, “Crimea is Ukraine.”
A Ukrainian intelligence official said Saturday that Ukraine could use HIMARS to hit Ukraine. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded and said such attacks could lead to “doomsday” for Ukrainian leadership and said it’s a “systemic threat” to Russia that Ukraine and NATO countries don’t recognize Crimea as Russian territory.
I don’t believe a word uttered by Zelensky and his fascist cronies including their MH17 stories over the last eight years since they seized the legitimate Ukrainian government in February 2014. It were Ukrainian MIG that shot down MH17 in the air. They had a motive, not Russia.
More plausible than the US and NATO stories
Not to mention Siberia Airlines Flight 1812, shoot down by the ukraine prior to that in 2001. They denied it until they were overwhelmed with evidence.
Safe bet to assume that these wunderwaffen du jour only are protected by ukranian troops, the US and the English operates them. Poor Bstards. Still doesn’t prevent the most corrupt “County” in the world from selling them to Russia or revealing their location though.
Russian “Surgical Strikes.” Lol
OOOOOOOOO NO, PSEUDO DON BACK AGAIN …….. Lol
Crimea could be the trigger, territory in dispute, a localized dispute with international consequences. And history repeats itself.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
More HIMARS hysteria. We’re talking 8 launchers here; barely one battery – and the HIMARS only fires half the rockets that the MLRS does. Yet, to look at a map, and Ukraine/US media (is there a difference?) claims, the HIMARS are everywhere. It’s complete nonsense.
For context, US 7th Corps used about 80 MLRS (each, again, with double the rocket capacity of HIMARS) as support in the attack on Iraq in Desert Storm, and that was only a fraction of the total firepower brought to bear.
The effect of HIMARS in Ukraine is 95% political; trumped-up claims being made to “encourage” the West to continue to give, more and more, to a losing cause.This is just silly.
Yeah, 8 launchers won’t do much, but I think a factor is the US wants operational data using the system against the Russians. Of course that works both ways, and you aren’t going to get much data when the thing gets blown up on the ground.
Phase III of the Operation just started by Russia…!
Just because the US State Department says that Crimea is part of Ukraine, doesn’t mean that it is. But, I think Zelensky realizes that Russia will retaliate against a HIMARS attack on Crimea with a response that would not soon be forgotten.
“When the US sent Ukraine the HIMARS, Biden administration officials said they received “assurances” that they won’t be used to target Russian territory.”
Which made quite a few of us laugh at the time. And not a “funny” laugh.
So far there are only eight HIMARS on the battlefield, and four of those are either destroyed, captured or sold off to the Russians by corrupt Ukrainians. That’s a fifty-percent loss in just a few weeks. The main point of Shoigu’s orders are to finally stop the Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk now that the main operation in Donbass is starting to come to its conclusion. The Ukrainians are using the remaining HIMARS to attack civilians in Donestsk, and Russia has had enough of that.
How long before the two breakaway republics are part of the Russian federation? Once a referendum is launched in those two areas, any future attacks will be seen as acts of war against the Russia federation.
Has the Russian Federation offered to accept the results of any such referendum? If not, they can vote as many times they like to become part of the Russian Federation and it won’t magically cause that to happen.
My recollection is that LPR/DPR have, in the past, formally requested to be annexed by the Russian Federation, and got told no. Presumably when Russian forces have secured their independence, that could change, though.
I’m hearing that Russia will in fact annex those two breakaway republics like they did with Crimea.
Probably true. However, my personal opinion is that Russia is going to take all of Ukraine, so that issue will be moot. Ukraine may remain as an “independent state” 0- under Russian control, much like Belarus – or it may be entirely subsumed into the Russia Federation, resuming its previous position as the name implies, “the borderlands.” Colonel Macgregor said today he thinks Russia doesn’t want western Ukraine, but admits that any rump Ukraine is likely to continue to cause trouble which will force Russia to take it all. I submit that Russia already knows that and will forestall that by taking it all immediately. Why leave a job half done just because the western Ukrainians are asshats?
When I look at the map, I just don’t see Russia crossing the Dnipro river. The military costs to cross such a formidable barrier are extremely high. But if Russia stops at the Dnipro, Ukraine would own the problem. Moreover, the area west of the Dnipro River does not share a border with Russia. If Russia created an independent but neutral East Ukraine between the Dnipro River and the Donbass region, any attack by West Ukraine on East Ukraine would be seen as an attack on ethnic Ukrainians. That’s a lot harder to justify than the last 8 years of shelling on ethnic Russians.
No. There are other considerations which I’m not going to go into here, having to do with countering the Aegis Ashore installations in Poland and Romania which is the actual reason for the SMO..
Putin goes HIMAR hunting.
That is good PR Domestically.
HIMARS are a considerable threat to Russian forces because they can strike very high value assets (such as ammunition warehouses) that were out of range 2 weeks ago. This is not a PR stunt. I assume that his order will be given very high priority.
On one hand, Ukraine has hinted it was behind the close-to-border Russian territory attacks that got press w/the April helicopter attack on an oil depot – followed by other such attacks.
And from this point of view, rocket attacks on Crimea would be an ‘extension’ of those Russian territory attacks.
On other hand, those attacks were covert operations – Ukraine equivocated about its responsibility – whereas rocket attacks on Crimea would be overt.
Therefore, though a) Ukraine and the US both assert Crimea is ‘part of Ukraine,’ and b) the US via Ukraine has engaged in brinkmanship with borderline-escalatory actions, I do NOT see the US authorizing Ukraine to attack Crimea with those rockets:
like directly giving airplanes to Ukraine, it would be too nakedly escalatory – both provoking Russian responses (like counter-shelling of Kiev, e.g.), and risking further fracture in the less ‘on-board’ NATO countries and a divided US public.
Follow-up on why Ukraine rocket attacks on Crimea would be problematic: in 2014 Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, and nothing I’ve read suggests that’s changed.
So the optics would be bad – w/such attacks appearing not just as an attack on Russia, but on a Crimean people who had long-established their desire to be sovereign and separate from Ukraine.