Well, it didn’t take long for Ukraine to take advantage of its new-found freedom to use Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia. A Ukrainian SU-75 Flanker like the one pictured above was reportedly used to deliver the missile.
Ukraine is boasting that it has launched its first successful airstrike by fighter jet inside Russian territory.
Zero Hedge reported an unidentified Ukrainian military source described to Sky News that an air-launched missile strike was conducted inside Russia’s Belgorod region Sunday, hitting a “Russian command node.”
Sky News says this “raised the likelihood that a Western-supplied missile was used in the attack, highlighting that it comes soon after Western allies including the US greenlighted Kiev’s use of NATO-supplied munitions to attack inside Russia.”
It was not immediately clear what type of munition was used in the attack, including whether or not it had been a Western missile, the report said.
The Ukrainian military source told Sky: “A Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) mission has struck a Russian command node in Belgorod.”
“While damage assessment is still occurring, it is confirmed as a direct hit,” the statement added. “This is the first UAF air-delivered munition delivered against a target within Russia.”
Cross-border drone attacks have become commonplace between the two warring nations, but never has there been a report of a fighter jet attacking a location inside Russia’s borders.
We also do not know for certain if it was an actual Ukrainian who was piloting the fighter jet, or if it was an American or national of some other NATO country posing as a Ukrainian.
Either way, this is a major escalation that we knew was coming. Russian President Vladimir Putin will now be forced to retaliate, as he has vowed to do, and this is the kind of tit-for-tat escalation that I have been warning cannot end well for the United States or its allies, or for Russia. There will be no winners when the cities are lying in smoldering ashes. Absent a miraculous breakthrough for peace, we are now well down the path toward World War III.