In mid-February this year, US President Joe Biden secretly decided to supply Ukraine with more than 100 "new long-range missiles" and an unspecified number of cluster munitions. These missiles were included in one of the defense aid packages for Ukraine worth $300 million, which was announced in March this year.
These are probably the MGM-140 ATACMS ballistic missiles with a range of 190 miles (over 300 km). The transfer of these missiles to Ukraine was also confirmed by US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink on her account on X social network.
Read more: Does New $1 Billion Aid Package From the US Include ATACMS for Ukraine?
At the same time, according to The New York Times, citing one of the unnamed American officials, the Defense Forces of Ukraine used these missiles to strike Dzhankoi military air base in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where the S-400 SAM system was destroyed, as well as "russian troops in the port city of Berdiansk."
According to the publication, the US sent these missiles to Ukraine "last week," and since the strike on the airbase in Crimea was carried out at night on April 17, it was a truly brilliant implementation of a probably prepared operation to destroy an important for russians surface-to-air missile system.
"These strikes proved once again that Ukraine can notch battlefield victories when given the right tools. Ukraine can put a target on every russian asset in Crimea, including critical ammunition and fuel depots. Imagine if they had these missiles two years ago," the senior Senator of Mississippi from Republican Party on the Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker said.
At the same time, the mystery surrounding the transfer of long-range missiles is quite simple to explain. This was necessary so that the Defense Forces of Ukraine could strike russian occupiers unexpectedly and so that invaders could not adapt to possible attacks with these missiles.
It should be noted that Ukraine already received long-range ATACMS missiles from the United States last year and successfully used them from the M142 HIMARS or M270 MLRS to strike russian occupation troops. Then, there were missiles with a range of 165 km.
Earlier Defense Express reported about 1,600 air defense and strike missiles that the UK was giving to Ukraine.
Read more: The U.S. Gives Ukraine Large Number of M2 Bradley, MRAPs, Other Armored Vehicles in New Military Aid Package
