France has begun supplying Ukraine with cruise missiles, long-range weapons that the Biden administration has so far refused to send.

“Births have been happening for some time and were expected,” Laurent Billy, French Ambassador to the United States, said Wednesday at an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A day after French President Emmanuel Macron made a more vague announcement that he had approved the transfer of Deepstrike munitions, Billy said:

“We have decided to increase the delivery of weapons and equipment so that the Ukrainian army can strike deep,” Macron said.

Mr Macron declined to say how many missiles will be launched. Reuters reported that the shipment will include 50 MBDA SCALP missiles drawn from existing French military stockpiles.

Quoted by an anonymous French military official Agence France-Presse yesterday Likewise, it said deliveries had already started.

Scalp is the French name for the Storm Shadow cruise missile that Britain began sending in May.

“I had a long discussion with the president,” Biri said. “We made this decision because we thought it was the right thing to do. We need to give Ukraine the means to win the war.”

The SCALP/Stormshadow missile has a range of 250 kilometers, far longer than the 70-kilometer range of the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) weapon supplied to Ukraine by the United States.

British Storm Shadows are believed to have killed Russian Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov today, according to reports from Russia and statements by Ukrainian officials. If confirmed, he would be the most senior Russian general killed in the war, reports a British newspaper. of Telegraph report. General officer casualties are estimated at between 9 and 20.

The French ambassador declined to say whether France was pressuring the United States to send equivalent long-range missiles to meet Kiev’s longstanding demands.

But lawmakers on Wednesday released an open letter from Republican chairmen and senior officials of the Senate Armed Services, Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Relations Committees, urging the administration to provide the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). is strengthening . Ground-launched missiles can hit targets up to 300 kilometers away.

In a letter explaining that the government has sent weapons from HIMARS to cluster bombs only after much debate, the representatives argued that the regime should send ATACMS to Ukraine.

Signatories condemned the UK’s deployment of Stormshadow missiles, saying the administration’s “concerns about escalation remain unfounded.”

U.S. Army General Randy George, who attended a Senate confirmation hearing today, was asked whether ATACMS would give Ukraine an advantage on the battlefield. George answered in the affirmative.

A NATO official told reporters last Friday that the allies had seen nothing to suggest that Ukrainians had used British-made Stormshadows in violation of their agreement to use the weapon under international humanitarian law. said no.

“We have proven that we are using them in a very responsible way,” Markarova said of the foreign-supplied weapons.

France appears to have similar restrictions on missile use. “There is a certain understanding between us about what this weapon can and cannot do,” the French ambassador said.

Last year, Ukraine used US GMLRS missiles to undermine Russia’s overwhelming superiority in artillery forces, including missiles targeting Russian command and logistics posts. In response, Russia withdrew its supply depots and command centers out of GMLRS range, about 120 kilometers from the front.

“We are very grateful to our partners for everything they have done for us,” Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova said at a Carnegie event on Wednesday. She said, “But we haven’t won yet, so we need more.”