Ukraine Is Lobbing Ballistic Missiles At Moscow

More are coming

Fire Point FP-9. Fire Point art

This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.

Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently called Russia’s ballistic missiles the country’s “last remaining argument in this war,” one against which Ukraine “must find sufficient countermeasures.” High-flying and extremely fast as they streak toward their targets, ballistic missiles are hard to intercept for all but the best surface-to-air systems such as the American-made Patriot—which is why Zelenskyy keeps pleading with allies for more of them.

For four years, that argument has run one way: Russia fires ballistic missiles Ukraine can rarely stop. It may now cut both ways.

On Tuesday, Russians near Moscow circulated photos of S-300/400 batteries engaging something at high altitude over the capital—too high for a drone or a cruise missile—and Russia’s defense ministry has since said its air defenses downed a Ukrainian “long-range operational-tactical missile,” a ballistic weapon, in the first such admission of the war.

Ukrainian one-way attack drones and cruise missiles don’t fly high. Ballistic missiles do. “Due to the missile alert issued for the region, and the high altitude in which the interceptions took place at, it is possible that Ukraine used their experimental FP-9 ballistic missile for the first time ever,” AMK Mapping noted.

Back in March, Denys Shtilerman, co-founder of Ukrainian munitions-maker Fire Point, claimed the company’s new FP-9 intermediate-range ballistic missile would be ready for deployment by this summer. But Shtilerman insisted it wasn’t an FP-9 that targeted Moscow.

Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.