Putin's Long-Range Missile Problem

BY ELLIE COOK ON 1/17/23 AT 7:22 AM EST

 

Rescuers of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine operate at the site of a missile strike and a high-rise residential building destruction on January 15, 2023 in Dnipro, Ukraine and inset image of a Kh-22 missile. The Kh-22 missile is "notoriously inaccurate," according to the U.K. Defense Ministry.GETTY

Russian strikes on Ukrainian ground targets show "dysfunction" in Moscow's long-range missile systems, according to a new military intelligence update.

On Saturday, a Russian missile struck an apartment block in the central city of Dnipro. Images and footage from the scene showed an empty space of rubble and smoke where the apartment block would have stood.

On Tuesday morning, the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said the death toll had risen to 44, including five children, with 79 people injured. A further 39 were listed as "saved."

A Facebook post on Tuesday from the city's mayor, Borys Filatov, confirmed that 44 people had been killed.

The missile used to carry out the strike was a Kh-22, Ukraine's armed forces said in the wake of the attack. A spokesperson for Ukraine's Air Force told Ukrainian television that the Kh-22, nicknamed the "carrier killer," was "designed to destroy aircraft carrier groups at sea," according to Ukrainska Pravda. Launched from a Tu-22M3 long-range bomber, the missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said.

The Kh-22, or the AS-4 KITCHEN large anti-ship missile, was "highly likely" responsible for the strike in the city of Dnipro, the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense wrote on Tuesday morning.

The missiles are "notoriously inaccurate when used against ground targets as its radar guidance system is poor at differentiating targets in urban areas," the government department argued in its daily intelligence update.

This type of missile is "unsuitable for precision strike," the ministry added, suggesting the Ukraine war had shown Russia to be suffering from "dysfunction" in their long-range strike capability.

The Kh-22 "highly likely struggles to dynamically identify targets, and to access rapid and accurate battle damage assessment," the ministry said.

The Defense Ministry pointed to similarities between the Dnipro strike on Saturday and "other incidents of civilian mass-casualties," including a Russian attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk in the summer.

On June 27, 2022, a Russian missile targeted a shopping center in the city, which Russian state media reported to be a weapons depot.

Russian forces had used "air-launched high-precision weapons" and the "detonation of the stored ammunition for Western weapons caused a fire at a defunct shopping mall located close to the factory's territory," a Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson told state news outlet Tass.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said at the time that the strike was "a planned Russian strike at this shopping center." But the U.K. Defense Ministry argued two days later there was a "realistic possibility" the strike may have "intended to hit a nearby infrastructure target."

The destruction of the Kremenchuk center showed "Russia's inaccuracy in conducting long range strikes," the ministry wrote.

"Russia's shortage of more modern precision strike weapons and the professional shortcomings of their targeting planners will highly likely result in further civilian casualties," the department then warned.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-long-range-missile-kh-22-dnipro-apartment-1774255