Ukraine has fired UK-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, multiple sources said.
The decision to approve the strikes was made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine, which British and US officials warned was a significant escalation of the near three-year conflict.
Videos uploaded to social media and circulated by pro-Russian war bloggers indicated that up to 12 missiles struck a target believed to be a command headquarters in the village of Maryno, the first confirmed use of British weapons on Russian soil during the war.
Photo: AFP
Ukrainian media reported that the site might have been used by North Korean and Russian officers.
Unconfirmed images distributed via the Telegram messaging app appeared to show fragments of the missile at a location in the Kursk region.
There was no official confirmation from the UK, although British Secretary of State for Defense John Healey appeared to hint at developments as he spoke to the House of Commons as reports of the attack in Kursk began to circulate.
Healey said he had spoken with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen over recent weeks significant change in the action and in the rhetoric on Ukraine, and Ukraine’s action on the battlefield speaks for itself,” he said.
It marks a rapid turnaround in the UK-Ukraine relationship, following complaints that Kyiv was frustrated by a refusal by London to supply a fresh batch of Storm Shadows. The UK was said to be stung by the criticism and the complaints are partly believed to have contributed to a change of heart.
A second element was a change in policy by the outgoing US President Joe Biden administration. The Storm Shadow strikes came a day after Ukraine used ATACMS missiles to hit targets in the Bryansk region.
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS