CNN: US secretly transferred ATACMS to Ukraine so that Russia would not have time to relocate the equipment
The US decided to transfer long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine secretly so that Russia would not have time to move equipment and weapons beyond their range, CNN reported citing an official.
The Wall Street Journal newspaper wrote on Tuesday that a small number of U.S. ATACMS long-range missiles had been secretly delivered to Ukraine in recent days. Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, claimed that the US ATACMS were already in Ukraine and had been used in a strike on the city of Berdyansk in the Zaporizhzhya region.
“The US decided in recent weeks to send them secretly because it wanted to take the Russians by surprise, especially after months of open debate over whether (US) President Joe Biden should agree to send these weapons…. Russia knows the range of the missiles, and the US was worried because they could move equipment and weapons out of range before using the missiles,” the TV station said.
Earlier in October, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said that the U.S. has nothing to announce yet about the possibility of transferring ATACMS missiles to Kiev. At the same time, the US magazine New Yorker claimed that US President Joe Biden had approved the transfer of ATACMS operational-tactical missiles to Ukraine back in September. The Americans have not yet officially announced the delivery of the systems with a range of about 300 kilometres, while Biden himself said when asked about it that the White House had “worked through” all of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s requests.
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