Ukraine admits moving long-range missile production abroad – and taking missile warfare to Russia’s home territory

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, has told the Spanish outlet ABC that Ukraine has moved some of its missile production facilities abroad, after a Russian strike on an assembly plant.

“This is a secret program,” he said, “and no one will be able to tell you about its current status.” “What I can tell you, though,” he added, “is that, unfortunately, Russia has hit the place of assembly of those missiles. We have now moved part of the production abroad.”

According to the official, Kyiv has no intention of using the U.S.-made long-range ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles to attack Russia. These weapons, Danilov assures, “will only be used for defending our territory.” He nevertheless believes that effective defense requires bringing the war to Russia’s home territory.

“Our goal is to use our weapons to target military objects in Russia, from where we see almost daily attacks on our children,” he said, adding that Ukraine will only target military facilities, and not Russia’s civilians.

The first episode of Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons against Russia became known in August. After an attack on a civil-military airport in Pskov, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukrainian weapons had hit a target at a distance of 700 kilometers (or more than 400 miles).

Concurrently, Oleksiy Danilov published a Facebook video showing the launch of a missile, whose type wasn’t clear from the footage. Meanwhile, the head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate Kyrylo Budanov said that Pskov had been attacked by drones launched from Russian territory.

Last week, the U.S. authorities decided to transfer a small batch of ATACMS missiles to Kyiv. In addition, Ukraine is also armed with long-range Storm Shadow missiles, provided by the UK and France.