How lifting ban on long-range missile strikes could change Ukraine war

UK and US may drop restrictions which forbid Kyiv from firing supplied weapons at targets in Russia

At an air base on the outskirts of Lipetsk in western Russia, Vladimir Putin’s elite fighter jocks prove their aerobatic worth at Moscow’s “Top Gun” aviator school.
Located within range of Ukraine’s British and American-supplied long-range missiles, the cream of the Russian air force could soon find themselves under a cross-border missile barrage if Sir Keir Starmer and Joe Biden agree to unlock restrictions on Kyiv for strikes deep into Russia.
Russia may well have already begun evacuating the fighter school, especially after storage facilities at the air base were hit by drones in August. 
But giving Kyiv the green light for long-range missile strikes will no doubt affect the course of the war.
The Institute for the Study of War has identified at least 225 potential targets that Ukraine could hit immediately. 
These include military airfields, training bases, logistics hubs and manufacturing sites that all play a role in supporting Russia’s war machine.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, has repeatedly pleaded for the removal of restrictions on the weapons. 
David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, were in Kyiv on Wednesday to discuss the issue with Mr Zelensky.
However, experts have warned that granting Ukraine permission to use French and British Storm Shadow missiles and US ATACMS missiles would not be a silver bullet.
“We should not over-egg what this will do,” Matthew Savill, the military sciences director for the Royal United Services Institute, told The Telegraph. “I’m afraid some of this talk of turning the tide and those kinds of comments are just overblown on what Storm Shadow will achieve.”
There are also doubts as to how many Storm Shadow missiles Ukraine has left in its arsenal, which have been used by Kyiv within Ukraine since last spring.
Britain no longer produced Storm Shadow weaponry in large quantities, and French production of its sister missile – Scalp-EG – was on “life support”, said Colby Badhwar, a security and defence analyst.
If there were genuine shortages of the missiles, Ukraine would have to pick its targets very carefully, so as not to waste the remaining resources, Mr Savill said.
The second issue is the range at which Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles can operate.
While both are capable of hitting targets comfortably almost 200 miles away, US intelligence officials believe Russia has moved up to 90 per cent of its aircraft out of reach.
However, the further Russian jets are from the front line, the fewer sorties they can fly – an indirect benefit of having Western missiles covering large areas of land.
Freeing Ukraine from restrictions on the weapons could also lead to other tactical and political benefits.
For instance, the decision would send a signal that London and Washington no longer worry about Russian retaliation. And could this finally convince Germany to offer up its Taurus cruise missiles for Kyiv to use within Ukraine?
Other weapons could also be unlocked, such as the US-manufactured JASSM missile, which could enable Ukraine to strike targets 190 miles into Russia, including about 30 airbases.
Kyiv has shown it can attack deep inside Russia using its own domestically produced attack drones, which have hit hundreds of sites since autumn 2022.
These indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), however, do not carry warheads capable of penetrating through hardened structures.
While Russia does sometimes leave ammunition or fighter aircraft in the open, it uses bunkers reinforced with thick layers of concrete to protect its assets – which Storm Shadow’s warhead could punch through.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, recently told The Telegraph that this very argument had been put forward by officials trying to convince Sir Keir Starmer to unlock the use of the missiles.
American-supplied ATACMS – also known as the Army Tactical Missile System – would be used in a different way.
ATACMS are ballistic missiles fitted with cluster munitions, which scatter thousands of small bomblets over a target and would be better suited to disabling runways at Russian airfields or hitting troop gatherings in the open.
Models fitted with the unitary warhead provide the ability to destroy less-protected single targets, like air defence or electronic warfare systems, also in the open.
To be truly effective, long-range missile launches would have to be combined with advances by Ukraine’s ground forces.
“If you’re not making progress on the ground, the pressure behind the lines is tolerable,” Mr Savill said.
Ukraine has shown that it is capable of putting Russian forces under significant pressure in Crimea and the Black Sea area with aerial attacks, but has never been able to double down with manoeuvres on the ground.
The long-range attacks launched ahead of Kyiv’s failed summer counter-offensive last year also proved ineffective because Ukrainian forces could not penetrate Russia’s ground defences.
Cross-border strikes into Russia would only allow Ukraine to take advantage on the ground in a few select areas of the battlefield – Russia’s southern Kursk region and the north-eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
Protracted discussions over whether to grant Kyiv permission have also come at a cost.
Briefings in Washington and the visit to the Ukrainian capital by Mr Lammy and Mr Blinken have acted as a public sign-posting that a decision on usage of the missiles is likely.
This means the element of surprise has been removed from the equation.
Moscow has already signalled that it expects a decision to be made by the UK and US, and it did so before anything had been publicly stated by London or Washington.
The Kremlin on Wednesday said it would respond with “an appropriate response” if the US did allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range missiles.