Russia’s “prestigious” Kh-101 missiles hint at a handful of problems in the production line of the long-range missiles used to bombard Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to a new assessment.
On March 31, Ukrainian media reported that a Russian Kh-101 missile had landed in the country’s southwestern Saratov region after a missile barrage aimed at Ukraine.
Some reports suggested fragments that landed in a field in the Saratov region belonged to a Ukrainian drone. Other sources, including Russian independent outlet Astra, shared images purporting to show that the wreckage belonged to an air-launched Kh-101 missile.
Kyiv’s Air Force said on March 31 that Russia had launched 14 Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles from Tu-95MS strategic bombers from the Saratov region.
The Saratov region is home to Russia’s long-range aviation. A number of strategic bombers are based at the Engels-2 facility close to the city of Saratov, from which Russia’s military carries out strikes against Ukraine. Kyiv has repeatedly targeted the base, which is deep in Russian territory.
The debris found in the Saratov region late last month was likely down to a “malfunction” of a Kh-101 missile fired at Ukrainian earlier in the day, the British Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update posted to social media on Tuesday.
The ministry describes the Kh-101 missiles as “Russia’s premier precision guided munition.” They have a range of around 4,000 kilometers, or nearly 2,500 miles, and are also referred to as AS-23a Kodiak missiles.
The apparent malfunction of “such a prestigious missile” indicates there are problems in the missile’s production, that the supply chain is hampered by sanctions leveled at Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, and the product being “rushed to meet the demands of the conflict,” the ministry said.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Wojtek Laski/Getty Images
Russia has burned through its missile stockpiles in more than 25 months of war but has placed its industry on a war footing to keep its production of military equipment moving. Western countries have slapped Moscow with sanctions aimed at curtailing Russia’s ability to produce new missiles—something Kyiv, and many Western experts, have deemed largely ineffective.
Ukraine has said that Russia has increased its Kh-101 strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in recent months. But now that Moscow has refilled its stockpiles of Kalibr cruise missiles, it will opt to resume Kalibr strikes “because the number of Kh-101s has significantly decreased,” Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, said in late March.
At the start of the year, Vadym Skibitsky, a spokesperson for the GUR, said Moscow had adapted and improved its Kh-101 missiles, adding the versions Russia was firing at Ukraine as of 2024 are “completely different from those used in 2022.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.