The Kremlin warns that the US and Britain will participate in the war “with full rights” if Western missiles hit Russia

The Kremlin has warned the United States and Britain that they will be seen as “full-fledged” participants in the Ukraine war if Storm Shadow missiles and HIMARS are used to hit targets in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea.

Vladimir Putin’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, has warned that he will target “decision-making centers” in Ukraine, implying that he plans to order his army to attack Volodymyr Zelensky and his government leaders in Kiev.

Shoigu said: ‘According to our information, the leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces plans to launch attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles.

“The use of these missiles outside the area of ​​the special military operation would mean full US and UK involvement in the conflict, which would imply immediate attacks on decision-making centers in Ukraine.”

Its claim that Crimea is part of Russia is disputed by the West, and by international law, which considers it Ukrainian.

Putin forcibly annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014.

So far, Ukraine has used the long-range British-supplied Storm Shadow and US-supplied HIMARS to hit targets in Russian-occupied areas of mainland Ukraine, not including Crimea.

Shoigu’s threat came as Russia admitted today that it had lost another colonel in an earlier Storm Shadow attack near Crimea, on Arabat Spit.

Colonel Sergei Postovalov, 53, will be buried tomorrow after he was fatally wounded in the June 10 attack that hit a Russian command post near Henichesk minutes after Putin’s deputy prime minister Denis Manturov visited.

Putin was reported to have visited the site in April.

Postovalov was a colonel in the forces of the Russian Interior Ministry.

His death follows the killing of Russian Army Major General Sergey Goryachev, 52, in an attack in the annexed region of Zaporizhzhia earlier this month, also seen as a Storm Shadow attack carried out by Ukrainian forces. .

Shoigu is clearly taken aback by the power, especially of the Storm Shadow with a range of 155 miles, which has been fired from Ukrainian Su-24 warplanes.

“The Kiev regime is using a large number of Western weapons and elite formations whose personnel have been trained by NATO specialists,” Shoigu told the Russian defense ministry college.

Last week, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-appointed head of Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia region, admitted that the weapons are causing “trouble” and are even more problematic for Kremlin militaries than US-supplied HIMARS systems.

His words confirm the impression that the long-range Storm Shadow has been a game changer for the Ukrainians as kyiv launches its counteroffensive.

“They certainly give us problems with their missiles, I must say, especially Storm Shadow,” Balitsky said.

“Somehow we’ve learned to tear down [US-supplied] HIMARS.

But [British-supplied] The shadow ones are even more difficult. They arrive, and they have a larger radius. So it’s a problem for us.

‘In fact, our air defense is having difficulties with [Storm Shadow].

“It shoots them down, but there’s only a 50 percent chance the missiles will be shot down.”

And he added: ‘Of four, three have recently arrived.

Sometimes two arrive. The missile is modern, although it is not the newest, but it is fast enough, it flies correctly. I mean, at different speeds, at different altitudes, changing modes, so it’s not easy to shoot down.

Britain announced the supply of Anglo-French designed Storm Shadows to Ukraine on May 11, responding to a longstanding demand from Kiev for long-range missiles to help defend its territory against Putin’s invading armies.

Storm Shadows have also hit the occupied port cities of Berdiansk and Mariupol on the Azov Sea, reports say. And the £2.2 million per unit missiles were used to target Lugansk in the occupied Donbas.

GPS-guided land-based missiles with a 450kg warhead have a range of around 155 miles. The missiles allow Ukrainian forces to penetrate deeper into Russian-controlled territory than was previously possible.

Storm Shadow is a long-range, low-observable, air-launched cruise missile developed since 1994 by Matra and British Aerospace, and now manufactured by MBDA.

Defense Secretary Ben Wallace previously confirmed that Ukraine had used the missiles on May 18, but declined to elaborate.

He said the missiles gave the Ukrainians the ability to attack Russian command and control centers that had been moved further back in the front line to keep them out of range of the rocket artillery systems the West had supplied to Kiev.

Ukraine is the only country to which the UK publicly supplies these missiles.

Britain also became the first country to provide Ukraine with long-range precision missiles with the delivery.

They were also suspected of being used earlier this month when Russian MP Viktor Vodolatsky suffered injuries following an attack on May 15.

The missiles were first used operationally by UK forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where they were tested by 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force.

The RAF and the French Air Force have used them against Isis. Britain also used them against Syrian forces in 2018.