{"id":206394,"date":"2025-10-17T11:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206394\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T11:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:18:08","slug":"bbc-verify-live-assessing-reports-of-crimea-strike-and-attack-on-zelenskys-home-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/206394\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Verify Live: Assessing reports of Crimea strike and attack on Zelensky&#8217;s home city"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomahawks give Ukraine potential to strike deeper into Russiapublished at 11:43 BST<\/p>\n<p>11:43 BST<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-8kvzjk-Contributor etflsgg2\">Olga Robinson and Thomas Copeland<br \/>BBC Verify<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As we mentioned earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington today where he\u2019s expected to make a case for the US to supply his armed forces with Tomahawk missiles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These weapons have a range of up to 2,500km (1,550 miles) which would allow Kyiv to strike deeper and with more impact inside Russia. Ukraine could use them to target larger and more important targets, like air bases and military depots which are beyond the range of its current arsenal of missiles and drones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cThis could force the Russians to further disperse their air defence systems, which are already rather overstretched,\u201d says Justin Bronk, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute think tank.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But he warns this would simply increase the costs of the war for Russia and not fundamentally change the course of the conflict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Tomahawks would be \u201ca scalpel, rather than a scythe,\u201d agrees Justin Crump,  a former British Army officer and CEO of risk consultancy Sibylline. He says only 20 to 50 could potentially be sent by the US due to stockpile shortages.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tomahawk cruise missile infographic showing their range on a map of Ukraine and Russia\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6bcf0e9b-b14c-4948-b6fb-c51e6813ebc5.png.webp.webp\"  width=\"1280\" height=\"1402\" class=\"ssrcss-11yxrdo-Image edrdn950\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tomahawks give Ukraine potential to strike deeper into Russiapublished at 11:43 BST 11:43 BST Olga Robinson and Thomas&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-206394","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}