Use of ageing missiles highlights how depleted Moscow’s stocks of long-range missiles are, says UK ministry of Defence
- What we know on day 276 of the invasion
Russia’s stock of long-range missiles is so depleted that it is likely removing nuclear warheads from ageing nuclear cruise missiles and firing the unarmed rockets at Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence says.
Its latest intelligence update says imagery has shown the wreckage of an AS-15 Kent cruise missile – apparently shot down – that was designed in the 1980s “exclusively as a nuclear delivery system”.
The warhead had probably been substituted for ballast. Although such an inert system will still produce some damage through the missile’s kinetic energy and any unspent fuel, it is unlikely to achieve reliable effects against intended targets.
Russia almost certainly hopes such missiles will function as decoys and divert Ukrainian air defences.
More than 6m households in Ukraine are still affected by power cuts, two days after targeted Russian strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. “As of this evening, blackouts continue in most regions [of Ukraine] and in Kyiv. In total, more than 6 million subscribers,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Friday. The number of affected households had reduced “by half” since Wednesday. He said about 600,000 people were experiencing power cuts in Kyiv, the capital, with the Odessa, Lviv, Vinnytsia and Dnipropetrovsk regions also among the worst affected as temperatures approach freezing.
Russian shelling on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson killed 15 civilians on Friday, officials said, as engineers across the country sought to restore heat, water and power to major cities. Thirty-five people had been injured, including a child, and several “private houses and high-rise buildings” damaged, city official Galyna Lugova said. The shelling of Kherson, a key eastern city recently recaptured by Ukrainian forces, was the deadliest Russian bombardment in recent days. Yarovslav Yanushovich, head of the Kherson military administration, said Russian forces “opened fire on a residential area with multiple rocket launchers”.
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