Russia Suffering Missile Production Headache, According to Kyiv

Russia’s program to produce missiles has been hit by technical problems and has fallen months behind schedule.

Ukraine’s Resistance Center (NRC), which was set up soon after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, and operates under the Special Operations Forces of the country, said its cyber activists had unearthed documentation detailing issues Moscow faces in manufacturing missiles. Newsweek has been as yet unable to verify this claim.

The documentation identifies firms that are intermediaries for purchasing components for weapon manufacturing. The NRC said “every company whose products the enemy uses to produce weapons will be known to the public.” Following a cyber operation that lasted more than a year, “relevant authorities have the data to block proxy firms and extend sanctions,” the group added.

Among them was the Special Technology Center in St. Petersburg and the Dubna manufacturing plant, in the Moscow region, “where ‘ordinary Russians’ manufacture weapons to kill Ukrainians.” Newsweek has contacted both plants and the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

The NRC published files it says show detailed diagrams and analysis of the Russian Kinzhal Kh-32 missile and a description of its modifications. Ukraine has frequently reported that Russia has fired Kinzhals over the course of the war, although Kyiv says its air defenses have managed to shoot down the hypersonic missiles.

The NRC said its revelations had showed that Russia “is unable to produce modern missiles on its own due to technological backwardness” and that Russia’s military-industrial complex is looking for new supply routes.

Russia’s order for the missile program had been delayed by four to six months, for the first time since 2022. “As a result of the cyber activists’ operation, plans to destroy energy infrastructure were disrupted and Ukrainian lives were saved,” the NRC said.

In January, the NRC reported that it had obtained evidence that Russia was planning to equip Kh-32 cruise missiles with cluster munitions.

As Newsweek has previously reported, Russia’s use of Kinzhals “have not had any major—let alone decisive—impact on the war to date,” James Black, assistant director of defense and security at the European branch of the RAND think tank, said.

Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday that two people had been killed and 26 injured in a Russian missile strike on the city of Sumy two days earlier. The attack damaged a school, a central hospital, a regional emergency medical center, and a water utility facility.

Sumy Oblast borders Russia and is regularly targeted by daily Russian attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said on Thursday that there were people “killed and injured” without specifying the numbers of casualties.