Washington has authorized the AFU command to independently determine the targets for strikes with the HIMARS volley launcher system, the Ukrainian daily Strana.UA has quoted the US ambassador to Ukraine, Brigitte Brink, as saying.According to Brink, the USA intends to transfer the missiles to Kyiv in the near future.
Earlier, the AFU received HIMARS shells, which are not capable of hitting farther than 160 kilometers, and the Washington Post wrote, citing its sources, that the United States provides the AFU with coordinates of targets for HIMARS strikes. The new missiles, the transfer of which Brink announced, will have a longer range, but whether they will be ATACMS operational-tactical missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers is unknown. The transfer of these missiles was requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last December during his visit to the United States.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the US has transferred 39 HIMARS MLRS systems to Kyiv. Ukrainian authorities officially stated in 2022 that they would use the installations solely as “deterrence weapons” and do not plan to use the U.S. weapons to strike targets on Russian territory. In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that supplying ATACMS to Kyiv would pose an additional threat, but Russia is ready to repel such attacks.
On December 27, the United States handed Kyiv a $250 million military aid package. It included ammunition for HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank systems. The US budget for 2024 envisages military aid to Ukraine in the range of 300 million dollars.
