How Can Russia Defend 3 Million Square Miles from Ukraine's Flamingo Missiles? Short Answer—It Can't.

The giant cruise missiles range 1,900 miles with 2,200-pound warheads.

It’s hard to overstate the impact Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile could have on the Russia-Ukraine war. For the first time in the 42 months since Russia widened its invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian forces can strike Russia with the same intensity Russian forces routinely strike Ukraine.

“Ukraine is increasingly taking the war to Russia now,” American-Ukrainian war correspondent David Kirichenko wrote in a new essay for The Atlantic Council.

It gets worse for the Russians. Russia’s drone and missile campaign mostly targets Ukrainian cities in a country of just 233,000 square miles. Ukraine’s drones and missiles target air bases, factories and oil refineries in a country of 6.6 million square miles.

The Flamingo, made by Ukrainian firm Fire Point, should be able to hold at risk roughly half that area.

Ukraine’s air defense problem is hard but simple. Ukrainian air defenses must contend with nearly daily raids involving potentially hundreds of drones and missiles, but they can concentrate around the biggest cities that are the Russians’ main targets.

By contrast, Russia’s air defense problem is hard and complex. “The Kremlin simply does not have enough air defense systems to protect thousands of potential military and energy targets spread across 11 time zones,” Kirichenko wrote.