When missiles fired from Ukraine destroyed a S-300/400 air defence battery on Russian territory over the weekend of June 1 and 2, it immediately gave rise to speculation that the missiles were from US high mobility artillery rocket systems, or Himars. It was assumed they were part of the large package of military aid which was finally approved by Washington at the end of April.
The reason for this assumption is that Ukrainian missile systems do not have a sufficient range to hit those particular targets, which were situated in a field in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, which borders Ukraine. The site was an estimated 80kms from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has itself come under heavy bombardment from inside Russia.
The question of whether Ukrainian military units would be allowed to use western-supplied weapons to attack targets inside Russia has come up many times since Putin launched his invasion in February 2022. For two years, the supply of arms from the US and Kyiv’s other western allies came with a strict prohibition against attacking targets outside Ukraine.
