U.K. sends long-range missiles to Ukraine as Kyiv delays counteroffensive against Russia

Ukraine’s leaders appear to be lowering expectations about a much-anticipated new offensive against occupying Russian forces, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that the conditions on the battlefield are not quite right while Kyiv’s foreign minister notes that a Ukrainian counterattack may only be one of many battles to come.

With much riding on the campaign to reclaim Russian-occupied lands in the east and south, Mr. Zelenskyy said in an interview that his forces are still waiting for more equipment such as armored vehicles promised by Western allies.

“With [what we have] we can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people and I think that’s unacceptable,” Mr. Zelenskyy said Thursday in an interview with European public service broadcasters. “So, we need to wait.”

Ukraine recently announced that it was organizing nine newly formed brigades equipped with Western tanks and armored vehicles in preparation for the spring assault.

For months, Western analysts have predicted that Kyiv would launch a counterattack against Russia once the weather improved and the spring mud dried up. Both sides have remained essentially in a stalemate following Kyiv’s liberation last summer of hundreds of square miles of territory captured by Moscow in the early days of the war.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said it was premature to say that the next major military mission will be the last battle of their war against Russia. 

“We don’t know what will become of it. If we succeed in liberating our territories with this counteroffensive, then at the end of the day you will say, ‘Yes, it was the last one,’” Mr. Kuleba said Wednesday in an interview with the German newspaper “Bild.” “But if not, that means we have to prepare for the next counteroffensive.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force that have been doing much of the fighting, expressed doubts about the Ukrainian announcement, saying stepped-up fighting has already begun around the fiercely contested eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Recent Ukrainian combat operations there have proven to be “unfortunately, partially successful,” Mr. Prigozhin said.

Russia is strengthening its defenses along an almost 900-mile front line in Ukraine. Satellite images from Crimea — which Moscow annexed in 2014 — show an extensive array of trenches and fortifications throughout the peninsula. 

Help for Kyiv may be on the way.

Great Britain confirmed Thursday it was sending the first Western long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, which can be used to strike Russian targets such as supply depots deep behind the front lines. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace told lawmakers in the House of Commons that the U.K. would provide Kyiv with its Storm Shadow cruise missile.

“The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality,” Mr. Wallace said. “Their use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory.”

The air-launched Storm Shadow has a range of about 155 miles and can reach speeds of 620 mph. The U.S.-built HIMARS rockets sent to Ukraine have a range of 50 miles and the Biden administration has balked at providing more long-range missiles in part for fear of provoking the Kremlin.

Retired Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army-Europe, praised the decision to send Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, noting that Russian warships and supply vessels in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol would now be within range of attack.

“This will give Ukraine [the] capability to make Crimea untenable for Russian forces,” he said Thursday in a Twitter post. 

Mr. Wallace called the decision to send Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, “a calibrated, proportionate response to Russia’s escalations,” including the recent accelerated targeting of civilian sites in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

“Russia must recognize that their actions alone have led to such systems being provided to Ukraine,” Mr. Wallace said.