Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky thanked US President Joe Biden for delivering high-precision ATACMS missiles. He spoke to Biden by phone and thanked him “for the effective implementation of our recent defense agreements,” Zelensky said in his evening speech today via video. “The Ukrainians were very pleased to receive the ATACMS missiles and our soldiers successfully use them on the battlefield.”
The delivery of the US missiles had been announced some time ago, but apparently recently occurred in complete silence. The precision weapons were used for the first time in the Ukrainian theater of war on Tuesday. Severe damage was caused to two Russian military airports in eastern Ukraine. Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin described the new weapons as an “additional threat.”
Hope for long-range missiles
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba expects new deliveries of long-range missiles from the US. In an interview broadcast by Ukrainian media on Thursday, he derived the “subtext” of an agreement between Biden and Zelensky. At the same time, Kuleba expressed the hope of receiving ATACMS missiles with greater range, up to 300 kilometers, from the US in the future.
So far, Ukraine has only received nearly two dozen of these projectiles with a limited range of 165 kilometers. The aim is to prevent attacks on targets inside Russia as much as possible. Missiles with a range of 300 kilometers could hit targets on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.