Ukraine claims it hit missile system inside Russian territory using Western weapons

The strike comes days after US President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to carry out limited strikes using US weapons in Russian territory around Kharkiv

Ukrainian forces claimed Monday that they had successfully hit a Russian S-300 missile system using Western-supplied weapons inside Russian territory. “It burns beautifully. It’s a Russian S-300. On Russian territory. The first days after permission to use Western weapons on enemy territory,” Ukrainian government minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted on Facebook alongside a picture purporting to show the strike. This comes just days after US President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to carry out limited strikes using US weapons in Russian territory around Kharkiv, after several European nations had removed restrictions on how the weapons can be used. It is unclear if the weapons used in the strike described by Vereshchuk were US-supplied. Ukraine had for months pleaded with Washington to allow it to strike targets on Russian soil with US weapons, as Moscow launched a brutal aerial and ground assault on Kharkiv, safe in the knowledge that its troops could retreat back to Russian soil to regroup and its weapons depots could not be targeted with Western arms. The permission granted by the US was both groundbreaking and bold, but tentative and highly conditional. Ukraine can only hit targets around Kharkiv, and the US is standing firm in not allowing Ukraine to use the most formidable munition it has been given to fire into Russia: the long-range missiles known as ATACMS that can hit targets 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) away.