Six children were injured in Friday’s attack on the Donbass city of Lugansk, according to local authorities. Two of the wounded minors were reportedly in serious enough condition to require hospital care.
At least two missiles struck the ‘Poly-pack’ food processing factory and the ‘Milam’ home goods store in central Lugansk on Friday afternoon. While the factory was closed, the blasts shattered the windows of the surrounding residential homes.
The acting head of the Lugansk People’s Republic Leonid Pasechnik called the strike “barbaric” and a “cynical war crime of the Kiev regime,” vowing it will “not go unpunished.”
Unlike Donetsk, which continues to be shelled, Lugansk was long considered to be out of range of Ukrainian artillery. Russian authorities initially suspected that Kiev’s forces had used “Grom” tactical missiles.
Shortly after the strike, however, a US-made ADM-160B decoy missile was recovered largely intact in the city center. It was unclear whether Kiev’s forces had deployed the decoys to fool the Russian air defenses, or had somehow rigged them with explosive warheads and used them in the strike.
According to the specification provided by its maker Raytheon, the ADM-160B has a maximum range of 800 kilometers. The decoys were not on the Pentagon’s official lists of almost $40 billion worth of weaponry and ammunition the US has provided to Kiev since President Joe Biden took office.
Ukraine recently received an unspecified number of British ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles, with a range of up to 250km. Kiev authorities have repeatedly targeted Russian territory with drones and improvised missiles, claiming that to be legitimate self-defense against the Russian “invasion.”
On Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the ‘Storm Shadow’ delivery “yet another extremely hostile step by London,” that “clearly confirms the unprecedented level of British involvement” in the conflict. Moscow reserves the right to “take all necessary measures to neutralize the threats that may arise” from the use of these missiles, with the UK bearing all the responsibility for the consequences.
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