Premium Russian cruise missiles is perhaps malfunctioning and lacking their targets, in response to new intelligence from the UK Ministry of Defence.
The UK MOD mentioned on Tuesday that it analyzed open-source photos taken on March 31, 2024, which confirmed missile wreckage in a area in Saratov Oblast, southern Russia.
The UK MOD mentioned the particles was initially thought of remnants of a “doable Ukrainian uncrewed aerial automobile.” Nonetheless, their evaluation concluded that the items had been probably “fragments of a Russian AS-23a KODIAK air-launched cruise missile.”
“It’s extremely probably the particles was the results of a malfunction of a KODIAK missile that was launched in direction of Ukraine earlier that morning,” the UK MOD mentioned.
“The extremely probably malfunction of such a prestigious missile signifies points in its manufacturing, probably impacted by sanctions and being rushed to satisfy the calls for of the battle,” the division added.
The AS23a Kodiak is one in all Russia’s prime precision-guided munitions and was designed to assault main army targets like airfields and warships. Also referred to as the Kh-101, it carries a 992-pound payload that may be geared up with excessive explosive or fragmentation warheads, per the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research.
Russia has been utilizing these missiles not simply to hit army targets but additionally to take out Ukraine’s grain silos and “damage international meals markets,” UK intelligence mentioned in October.
Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports has additionally destabilized Ukraine’s meals manufacturing and despatched meals costs hovering worldwide, even in locations like Kenya and Egypt, which relied closely on Ukrainian and Russian wheat imports.
Whereas Russia continues to be shedding a whole bunch of troops a month, Ukraine is struggling to forestall additional Russian frontline advances. It has suffered blows from the massive barrage of missiles Russia unleashed on it this winter.
In March, Russia additionally pounded Ukraine with glide bombs, a tactic that Ukraine can solely counter by taking out the planes that drop them. Ukrainian Minister of Overseas Affairs Dmytro Kuleba mentioned at a March 27 briefing that Russia dropped round 700 glide bombs on Ukraine inside six days, bombarding targets persistently from March 18 to 24.
With US assist nonetheless stalled out in Congress, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now begging for extra Patriot air-defense methods to defend cities like Kharkiv from Russian missile and bomb assaults. Ukraine can also be trying to construct drones that might search out Russian unmanned aerial automobiles as a substitute of burning by means of their stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles to forestall aerial harassment.
Representatives for the Russian and Ukrainian protection departments didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark from Enterprise Insider.
