UK defense secretary to be quizzed on Ukraine’s firing of British missiles into Russia

London — 

British Defense Secretary John Healey is expected to face lawmakers’ questions Thursday on media reports Ukraine used British-donated Storm Shadow missiles on targets deep inside Russia for the first time Wednesday.

Healey is to appear before the parliamentary Defense Committee Thursday morning. The hearing was scheduled before Wednesday’s reported attack.

Both the British and Ukrainian governments have refused to confirm or deny reports that Ukrainian forces fired up to 10 Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Maryino, a village in Russia’s Kursk border region. Social media images purport to show Storm Shadow missile fragments in the vicinity.

The reports follow U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision this week to approve the use of American ATACMS missiles on targets far inside Russia. Ukraine fired the American missiles into Russia within hours of Biden’s decision.

Moscow earlier warned Western nations that allowing Ukraine to attack its territory with long-range missiles would prompt a ’tangible’ response. Kyiv reported Thursday that Russia had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) carrying a conventional warhead at the central city of Dnipro. Authorities said two people were injured.

Russia did not immediately respond to the Ukraine statement.

ICBMs are also capable of carrying nuclear warheads thousands of kilometers. The attack follows Moscow’s lowering of its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons earlier this week.

The British Storm Shadow missiles have already been used against Russian forces in occupied Ukraine, including in a September 2023 attack that destroyed Russia’s former Black Sea fleet headquarters in Crimea. France has also supplied Ukraine with its version of the Storm Shadow missiles, known as Scalp.

The European missiles differ from the American-supplied ATACMS, said Patrick Bury, a defense analyst at Britain’s University of Bath.

“They are air launch missiles. Generally, depending on the export variant, they’ve usually got a range of 250 kilometers, or 155 miles. The ATACMS has a longer range than that and isn't air-launched - so therefore it's harder to intercept - in theory, at least,” Bury told VOA.

Both weapons systems will open a range of new targets, according to James Nixey, who leads the Russia-Eurasia program at London’s Chatham House.

“The range of both missiles is enough to get behind Russian lines and into Russian infrastructure targets so that will cut their supplies to their front line. So, the actual range of each missile is not as significant as the fact that Ukraine needs them in great quantity - and very fast indeed.”

The weapons are unlikely to change the course of the war, Nixey added.

“No single new innovation into the Ukrainian battlefield will do the trick, although they are hoping it will do. They're hoping that it will break the Russian spine and that the [Russian military] will fold, collapse and that will have a chain reaction back up into the Moscow. That seems relatively unlikely, I have to say. But the Ukrainians are desperate and they will do all that they possibly can with however little that they have,” Nixey told Reuters.

Ukraine will have to select its targets carefully, said Bury.

“It will slow down the rate of advance, but will it have a strategic impact? Would it change the course of the war? If you're giving them clearance to fire inside Russia, are you going to allow them to actually up the ante and start hitting energy infrastructure, you know, military infrastructure, oil refineries, etcetera, stuff that would really start to hurt the Russian economy? That's the question,” Bury said.

Meanwhile Germany, Ukraine’s second-biggest supplier of arms after the United States, this week again ruled out giving Kyiv its long-range Taurus cruise missiles, something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long desired.

Berlin fears being dragged into the war. “Nothing has changed for us, the situation, the circumstances are the same. And Taurus is Taurus - and not ATACMS or Storm Shadow - so our perspective on that issue is the same,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters Tuesday.

Germany’s main opposition, the Christian Democrats, support giving Ukraine the Taurus missiles. The party is ahead in the polls, with a general election scheduled in February.

However, the future of Western military aid to Kyiv remains uncertain following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election. Trump has pledged to end the war on his first day in office, although he has not provided any details on how he would achieve that goal.

Ukraine fears U.S. support may be cut under Donald Trump. Britain and France could opt to continue supplying Ukraine with missiles, Bury said. “They're both nuclear powers, they can take that risk if they want to. I think you might find a divergence between European NATO and U.S. NATO on some policy issues around Ukraine,” he told VOA.