France’s Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine

By Staff, Agencies

French President Emmanuel Macron has delivered on his promise to supply Kiev with the French variant of Storm Shadow missile, according to footage by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in which President Vladimir Zelensky is seen posing for a photo op with a rocket marked as SCALP-EG.

Macron initially announced his decision to provide Ukraine with “long-range missiles” in May, and doubled down on the promise at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, but until now it was unknown when they would be delivered.

In an undated video shared by Ukrainian authorities on Sunday, Zelensky is seen signing a missile attached to a Su-24 jet. The projectile was marked as SCALP-EG in French flag colors and a mix of Ukrainian coat of arms with the Eiffel Tower inside. It remains unclear how many French missiles were delivered and when.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry called the missiles by its British name Storm Shadow as it hinted that the Zelensky-signed projectile was used in a recent strike on two bridges connecting the Crimean Peninsula to Russia’s Kherson Region.

The British-French Storm Shadow / SCALP-EG is a long-range air-launched cruise missile with a firing range of around 250 kilometers [155 miles]. It was developed in the 1990s and used in a number of Western military operations, including the NATO intervention in Libya and strike in Syria that the US, the UK and France conducted jointly in 2018.