A purported Russian S-300 missile catching fire after a Ukrainian strike using a Western-supplied weapon. Photo: Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk via Facebook.
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Ukraine has reported its first-ever kill inside Russia using Western-supplied weapons.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk revealed on social media that Kyiv’s forces were able to neutralize a Russian S-300 missile system in an unspecified Russian territory.
She said the historic strike was achieved on the first day of being allowed to use donated weapons to strike deep into Russia.
“It burns well. This is a Russian S-300. On Russian territory,” she wrote.
Vereshchuk, who also serves as the Minister for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, did not say which Western weapon was responsible for the kill.
Long Overdue?
The milestone was reported amid an increasing number of countries allowing Ukraine to use their donated weapons for strikes deep into Russia.
Kyiv previously claimed that it could not strike Russian troops massing near their border because of the restrictions on the long-range weapons supplied by the West.
However, Ukraine’s allies have slowly lifted their policies, with Germany, Sweden, Poland, Canada, and Denmark now supporting Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory.
“It is completely within the rules of war that a country that is attacked must be able to answer for itself,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
The US has also recently given Kyiv some considerations, including granting broader use of its supplied weapons but only to defend the embattled Kharkiv region.
The S-300 is a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system currently in service with both the Russian and Ukrainian military.
It is designed to shoot down hostile aircraft, drones, and incoming cruise and ballistic missiles at a maximum range of 150 kilometers (93 miles).
It was the same missile that accidentally hit Poland in 2022 — a strike initially blamed on Moscow but was later found to have been caused by a Ukrainian mishap.
It was also the weapon used by Syria to strike Israeli Air Force jets two years ago.
