Putin: We’ll hit new targets if West sends Ukraine weapons
Chilling warning as Kyiv is targeted in cruise missile attack
KYIV came under fire from Russian cruise missiles yesterday as Vladimir Putin sent a warning to theWest.
The strikes were ordered as the Russian president said new Ukraine sites will be targeted if the West supplies more long-range weapons.
The capital was hit by missiles fired from the Caspian Sea, with some hitting factories.
Putin yesterday claimed the strikes had destroyed T-72 tanks supplied to Ukraine by eastern European countries.
The Russian Defence Ministry has said the tanks and other armoured vehicles had been hidden inside a garage.
But Ukraine accused Russia of targeting railway repair facilities.
Alexander Kamyshin, head of the Ukrainian railway network, said: “We don’t have any military machinery in our factory.
“Only freight railcars that help us export grain and iron ore.”
Supplies
Kyiv has asked for weapons which will allow their military chiefs to strike behind the frontline, allowing them to target reinforcements and supplies being transported forward.
Putin said yesterday: “All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal – to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible.”
On the prospect of Kyiv getting long-range rockets, he said Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck”.
The Russian leader said the Kremlin’s forces had been hitting Ukrainian weapons systems and “cracking them like nuts”.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace will today confirm Britain is sending Ukraine M270 rocket systems that can strike targets up to 50 miles away.
It comes just days after the US announced it will supply Kyiv with Himars multiplelaunch rocket systems.
There were more scenes of devastation and destruction across Ukraine yesterday. Russians launched missiles into the Nika-Tera port in Mykolaiv, a city near the Black Sea in the south.
The port facilities, said to contain large amounts of grain, were targeted and hit with rockets and set on fire. But Ukraine yesterday claimed it was now in control of half of the besieged eastern city of Severodonetsk after a series of successful counter-attacks pushed Russian troops back. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said only Putin can give the order to stop the war. He added: “The fact that there is still no such order is obviously a humiliation for the whole world.”