The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, 14 December 2021. Photo: AP / TT NYHETSBYRÃN / John Hamilton
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) struck a military facility near the city of Karachev in Russia’s western Bryansk region overnight with US-supplied ATACMS missiles, Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine reported on Tuesday, citing an AFU source.
The AFU General Staff reported on Tuesday morning that Ukraine had struck an ammunition depot in Karachev, recording “12 secondary explosions in the target area”, without specifying the weapons used in the attack.
The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed the strike in a statement reported by state news agency TASS, saying that “six ballistic ATACMS missiles” had targeted “a facility in the Bryansk region” at 3:25am Moscow time.
The ministry added that air defence units had taken down five missiles and damaged one, while “ATACMS fragments fell on the technical territory of a military facility in the Bryansk region”, causing a fire that had since been extinguished. No one was injured in the strike, the ministry said.
Telegram channel ASTRA reported on Tuesday morning that residents of Karachev had reported explosions throughout the night, saying that a military base had been attacked.
The AFU has not officially confirmed the use of ATACMS in the Karachev strike, but Kyiv said on Sunday that it planned to launch long-range missile strikes into Russia “in the coming days” after the Biden administration had greenlit their use.
Vladimir Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine earlier on Tuesday to include “aggression against Russia and its allies by any non-nuclear state … with the support of a nuclear state” as grounds for a nuclear strike.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that the reported policy change in Washington represented “a new round of tensions” and “a new situation in terms of US involvement in this conflict".
