Zelensky did not listen to Biden and used most of ATACMS missiles

The United States delivered about 500 ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. Kyiv had used most of them in eastern Ukraine, before Biden gave Zelensky permission to strike deep into Russian territory, The New York Times said.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by Russian Ministry of Defense, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Fragments of the ATACMS missile and the Pantsir air defense system

Today, Ukraine has only a few dozen such missiles left, perhaps 50 at most. Ukraine has launched at least 31 ATACMS missiles and 14 Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russian territory.

In turn, Russia has about 1,400 long-range missiles in stock: 350 Kalibr, 500 Oniks, more than 50 Kinzhal, more than 130 Iskander and more than 400 Kh-101, Kh-55 and Kh-35 class missiles, Andrey Yusov, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine said.

In addition, Russia is capable of producing 40-50 Iskander missiles, 30-50 Kalibr and about 50 Kh-101 missiles per month.

Sources at the Biden administration told Bloomberg that Ukraine would lose all of the captured territory in Russia's Kursk region by spring. Therefore, Kyiv will not be able to use it as a bargaining chip in future negotiations with Russia. Such negotiations will take many months before the parties to the conflict may conclude agreements. Ukraine has already lost about half of the Kursk region territory it captured as a result of the August invasion.

Details

The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS ) is a supersonic tactical ballistic missile designed and manufactured by the US defense company Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), and later Lockheed Martin through acquisitions. It uses solid propellant and is 13 feet (4.0 m) long and 24 inches (610 mm) in diameter, and the longest-range variants can fly up to 190 miles (300 km). The missiles can be fired from the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). An ATACMS launch container (pod) has one rocket but a lid patterned with six circles like a standard MLRS rocket lid to prevent an enemy from discerning what type of missile is loaded.