Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register July 18 (Reuters) – Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered generals to prioritize destroying Ukraine’s long-range missiles and artillery weapons after it used weapons supplied by the West to strike Russian supply lines. Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Russian forces are sweeping through eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and now occupy about a fifth of the country. Shoigu, one of Putin’s closest allies, inspected the Vostok group fighting in Ukraine, the defense ministry said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Shoigu “instructed the commander to give priority to the enemy’s long-range missiles and artillery weapons,” the defense ministry said. The ministry said the weapons were used to shell residential areas of Russian-controlled Donbass and to deliberately set fire to wheat fields and grain storage silos. Reuters was unable to verify reports on the battlefield from either side. The Zvezda news service showed Shoigu, dressed in combat fatigues, speaking alongside Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. The United States and its allies have supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s February 24 invasion, including long-range weapons that Kyiv says are beginning to help on the battlefield. Ukraine says it has carried out a series of successful raids on 30 Russian logistics and munitions hubs, using several newly-supplied Western-supplied multiple-launch missile systems. read more Moscow has highlighted its attacks on Western-supplied weapons in defense ministry briefings and accuses Ukraine of using long-range weapons to hit populated areas in separatist-held areas of the Donbass. Separatist leader Denis Pushilin said on Thursday that two people were killed when Ukrainian forces shelled a bus station in the separatist-held city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s interior ministry adviser, Anton Khraschenko, blamed Russian forces on social media for hitting central Donetsk, but blamed it on Ukraine. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report from Reuters. edited by Guy Faulconbridge Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
