New footage purportedly shows Russia moving multiple rocket launchers thousands of miles across Siberia to boost its war effort in Ukraine.
A train loaded with “Hurricanes” and other military firepower was seen in Irkutsk region, some five time zones east of the conflict zone.
The movement comes after the US and Britain announced they were sending long-range weapons systems to bolster Ukraine’s defences.
The Russian BM-27 Uragans, first deployed by the Red Army more than four decades ago, are already being used by Vladimir Putin ’s forces in the war, but the video evidently shows reinforcements.
A salvo of 16 rockets can be fired in 20 seconds, engaging targets up to 22 miles away.
The train also includes other artillery including the Soviet-era 2S5 Giatsint-S, a self-propelled gun capable of firing nuclear projectiles with a range of up to 25 miles.
The movement was spotted by the Ukrainian media.
The British-supplied M270 rocket systems come with munitions capable of striking targets at a distance of up to 50 miles.
US supplied M142 HIMARS systems can hit targets to around 43 miles.
The Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, claimed the more powerful Western weapons would not make any difference on the ground.
"There has been lots of talk about long-range hardware that Kyiv wants so badly,” he said.
“But no Western systems can change the situation on the ground.”
Vladimir Putin has threatened to hit new targets if the West supplies longer-range missiles to Ukraine.
The warning came hours before the Ministry of Defence announced it would help Ukrainian fighters defend their country by sending rocket launchers that can hit targets 50 miles away.
Explosions rocked Kyiv in the first assault on the capital in weeks as Russian strategic bombers fired missiles from as far away as the Caspian Sea.
Putin said the “fuss” around Western weapon supplies to Ukraine was designed to drag out the conflict, as Russian troops struggle against dug-in defenders in the eastern Donbas region.
He warned that if the US dispatched longer-range missiles to the war zone, “we will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting”.
The MoD said it will send the M270 multiple-launch rocket system in “a significant boost in capability for the Ukrainian forces”.
The move was “coordinated closely with the US decision to gift the high mobility artillery rocket system” to Ukraine.
It followed pleas from Ukraine for “longer-range precision weapons in order to defend themselves from Russian heavy artillery used to devastating effect in the eastern Donbas region”, said the MoD.
