The use of long-range missiles on Russian territory could disarm the aggressor - military columnist

The West continues to remove restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western weapons to strike military targets deeper in Russia. The United States explains the issue by saying that such attacks would be irrational as Russia has moved 90% of its aircraft inland, beyond the reach of ATACMS missiles.

However, this argument is not true, and authorizing strikes on military targets in Russia would have saved many lives and had a significant impact on the aggressor state. Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military and political columnist of the Information Resistance group, told OBOZ.UA how exactly.

According to him, there are currently 20 air bases within the reach of ATACMS missiles (300 km of the Ukrainian-Russian border), which are actively used by the Russians for their bombers, fighters and helicopters. The occupiers are forced to deploy them so close because the flight range of most of them does not exceed 600 km (for helicopters, it is even shorter, about 400-500 km), and they need to not only fly to the combat zone but also return back.

In particular, air bases in the areas of Yeysk, Kursk, Voronezh, Morozovsk, etc. are actively used.

"And if Ukraine had permission to strike all these bases with Western-made missiles, Russia would lose the opportunity to use these 90% of its aviation, which it has not withdrawn anywhere, and if it did, it would simply have no chance of reaching the border with Ukraine in full combat load," Kovalenko said.

He is convinced that the destruction of these bases and Russia's further use of them more than 300 kilometers from the border would have affected the average daily number of air strikes on Ukraine.

"The use of long-range missile weapons on Russian territory would disarm and critically weaken Russian aviation. It would make it as useless as the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which has now turned into a flotilla. When our Western partners justify the lack of permission to strike Russia and its airfields with their missiles by saying that there is nothing left to strike, it is an outright lie. Or it is the lack of knowledge of the speaker, who does not understand what he is talking about," the columnist is convinced.

In addition, he reminded, Russia has deployed hundreds of other military facilities at a distance of up to 300 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, which can and should be destroyed. However, Ukraine is still not allowed to do so.

At the end of August, Ukraine handed over to the United States a list of targets in Russia that could be hit by long-range ATACMS missiles. In this way, Kyiv tried to convey to Washington the need to protect Ukraine from Russian terror.

However, the United States is not going to revise the restrictions. Following Western media reports, officials have begun to say that such strikes "will not be of strategic value" ad that ATACMS will not be able to hit 90% of Russian aircraft attacking Ukraine because they have already been moved deeper into Russia.

In addition, the US claims to be "focused on helping Ukraine be more effective" and says that our country already has its own weapons that are not inferior to Western long-range missiles.

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