Pentagon: HIMARS Rockets Supplied to Kiev Can Reach Crimea

On Tuesday, Washington announced plans to provide an additional $625 million in military aid to Ukraine, a package that includes more deliveries of high mobility artillery rocket system M142 (HIMARS). The announcement came as Russia continues its special operation to 'demilitarize and de-Nazify' Ukraine.

Laura Cooper, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russian, Ukrainian and European Affairs, has stated that HIMARS missile systems that Washington continues supplying to Kiev “can reach the vast majority of targets, including Crimea.”

“And it's our assessment that with the existing GIMLRS [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System] capability that they have on the HIMARS and that we're providing more of, with this package, that they can reach the vast majority of targets on the battlefield,” Copper said on Tuesday.

The remarks came as she announced the Biden administration’s additional security aid to Kiev, which she said is “valued at up to $625 million” and which “will contribute to meeting Ukraine's critical defense needs.”

“In total, the United States has now committed more than 17.5 billion [dollars] in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including more than 16.8 billion since the beginning of Russia's invasion on February 24,” the US deputy assistant secretary of defense said, referring to Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.

Moscow Warns West Against Providing Kiev With Arms

Shortly after Moscow kicked off the special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, the US and its allies responded by slapping packages of “severe” sanctions against Russia and ramping up their military support for Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly slammed the West for its weapon supplies to Kiev, with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warning that "any weapon, [and] any arms shipment on the Ukrainian territory" would be considered “a legitimate target” by the Russian military.

For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has recently stressed that “Washington has once again demonstrated how much it has lost touch with reality, having actually become a party” to the Ukraine conflict. According to her, “further evidence of this is the US Congress recently agreeing on the allocation of a new assistance package to the Kiev regime worth almost $12 billion.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, underlined that the Ukraine conflict had become another pretext for the US and its allies to unleash an economic and information war against Moscow in order to deplete it strategically. “Ukraine has been picked [by the West] as an instrument of a hybrid war against Russia,” Shoigu added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted in his address to the nation in late September that the West’s current goal is “to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy” Russia. Putin referred to “some irresponsible politicians in the West,“ who “talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, systems that are capable of launching strikes against Crimea and other regions of Russia.”