Russians lack ballistic missiles, they will use S-300 and S-400 more frequently

Yurii Ihnat, the spokesman of the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that the enemy has less than 100 Iskander ballistic missiles left, so the Russians are increasingly using the modified S-300 and S-400 missiles to hit ground targets in Ukraine.

Source: Ihnat at a briefing

Quote:"The fact that the enemy began to use the S-300's more and more frequently, and we are also already seeing, perhaps, the S-400's [being used – ed.] against ground targets [these are anti-aircraft missiles designed for air combat and destruction of air targets].

They are being used increasingly often, from Kharkiv to Mykolaiv Oblast, and we can see them around Kyiv... This indicates that they have fewer ballistic missiles [left]."

Details: Ihnat notes that S-400 is a new anti-aircraft system that the Russians are very proud of. Its range spans hundreds of kilometres. 

To destroy such missiles, Western systems are needed; alternatively, S-400's need to be destroyed directly at the positions from which the missiles are launched.

Quote: "In the east, about 150 km [away – ed.]. These are actually S-300 systems, they need to be destroyed either with HARM missiles or in some other way on their positions."

According to the spokesman, the enemy has less than a hundred Iskanders left, but there is a large stockpile of S-300 missiles, as the Russian Federation keeps producing them.

The Russian Federation has about a hundred Kh-22 missiles left: "We are talking about a hundred missiles. Kh-22 missiles were also in our arsenal, we gave them to Russians for [Ukraine’s – ed.] gas debts, [as well as - ed.] Tu-22M3 aircraft, in particular... Some were handed over, and some were scrapped. Their fate is such that they now return to Ukraine. This, too, has already become a meme amongst the Russian public."

Since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, the Russians have already launched more than 210 such missiles, and  none of them were shot down: "Western modern systems (such as Patriot, SAMP-T) capable of shooting down ballistic missiles can destroy the X-22, but it is impossible to do this with the means available in Ukraine [at the moment – ed.]."

Background:

• Russians hit a multi-storey residential building in Dnipro during a large-scale missile attack on Saturday, 14 December.
• The Russians launched the attack using a Kh-22 missile designed to destroy aircraft carrier groups at sea.
• Dnipro city authorities announced three days of mourning for those killed in the Russian missile attack.
• As of the evening of 16 January, 40 people are known to have been killed in the Russian missile strike on a multi-storey residential building in Dnipro city. 

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