{"id":270975,"date":"2023-07-12T07:37:55","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T07:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270975"},"modified":"2023-07-13T06:05:25","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T06:05:25","slug":"france-to-supply-ukraine-with-long-range-cruise-missiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=270975","title":{"rendered":"France to supply Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Scalp on Rafale<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>John Irish \u2013 Reuters July 11, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>France will join Britain in supplying Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles, which can travel 250 km (155 miles), a move that allows Ukrainian forces to hit Russian troops and supplies deep behind front lines, French officials said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Emmanuel Macron said he had decided to boost military aid to Ukraine to help its counteroffensive as the French President arrived at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/nato-summit-seeks-agreement-ukraine-bid-after-turkey-deal-sweden-2023-07-10\/\">summit<\/a> of the 31-member NATO alliance in Lithuania.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have decided to increase deliveries of weapons and equipment to enable the Ukrainians to have the capacity to strike deeply,&#8221; Macron said, while declining to say how many missiles would be sent.<\/p>\n<p>A French diplomatic source said they were talking about 50 SCALP missiles produced by European manufacturer MBDA.<\/p>\n<p>The missiles would come from existing French military stocks, a French military source told reporters, adding that it would be a &#8220;significant number&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Paris has previously supplied Mistral shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine and Crotale short-range anti-air missiles, which are used to intercept low-flying missiles and aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine has been asking for months for longer-range missiles but the United States, its main supplier, has yet to agree to supply them.<\/p>\n<p>Britain said in May it was supplying the Franco-British missile, produced by MBDA, that it calls the Storm Shadow.<\/p>\n<p>The French version, known as SCALP, has a range of about 250 km, three times as far as Ukraine&#8217;s existing missile capacities.<\/p>\n<p>The missiles were being integrated into Ukrainian Russian-made warplanes, the French military source said.<\/p>\n<p>The source dismissed suggestions that the missiles were an escalation, saying their use was proportional and noting that Russia was using cruise missiles launched from thousands of kilometres away.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It rebalances things and enables Ukraine to hit deep into Russian lines and can penetrate tougher targets,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Macron said the delivery would adhere to France&#8217;s policy of assisting Ukraine to defend its territory, implying that Paris had received assurances from Kyiv that the missiles would not be fired into Russia.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are guarantees for (restricting) the use of these missiles to internationally-recognised borders of Ukraine,&#8221; the military source said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/france-send-long-range-missiles-ukraine-macron-2023-07-11\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Britain supplied Ukraine with the Franco-British missile, which it calls the Storm Shadow, President Macron has authorised delivery of the French version <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":264952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[104,91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-france","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270975"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271006,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270975\/revisions\/271006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}