Last minute of Ukraine-Russia war: Putin has missiles ready for big attack

Ukraine fired Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles for the first time

According to British media, Ukraine has launched Storm Shadow missiles made in the United Kingdom against Russia for the first time.

The decision to approve the strikes was made in response to the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to Russia’s border with Ukraine, which British and US officials have warned as a significant escalation in the nearly three-year-old conflict.

Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that the UK will soon approve the use of Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, after US President Joe Biden approved the use of similar American weapons, missiles.

Unconfirmed images distributed through the Telegram messaging app showed fragments of these missiles at a location in the Kursk region. Trevor Ball, a weapons expert and former member of the US Army, says the images show fragments of Storm Shadow missiles, although he could not verify whether they were current or old.

The attack came a day after Ukraine used missiles supplied by the United States to hit targets in the Bryansk region. Western officials have indicated that they are specifically targeting North Korean deployments in the region as well as infrastructure that could be used for a 50,000-strong attack against Ukrainian incursions.

Vladimir Putin has warned that the use of US and UK-made missiles within Russian borders would amount to NATO entering into direct conflict with Moscow.