Dozens of precision missiles strikes a day are taking a toll not only on Ukraine, but on Russia, according to western military officials and experts.
Over 70 days of war in Ukraine, sophisticated and costly Russian missiles have targeted Ukrainian train stations, airfields, military command posts, weapons depots and staging areas where soldiers and weapons gather before the fight.
They have claimed Ukrainian lives, destroyed infrastructure and taken donated western weapons out of the fight.
But suspected Russian vulnerabilities are also coming to light.
On top of reports of high Russian casualty numbers and strategic difficulties on the battlefield, there are claims that Russia’s stocks of precision-guided missiles — rockets armed with technology to strike specific targets from a distance of up to 2,500 kilometers in some cases — are running low.
The US Defense Department said this week that 2,125 missiles have been fired since the invasion of Ukraine began.
“This is definitely a high number. It’s certainly more than they (Russia) had planned on,” said Ian Williams, deputy director of the Missile Defense Project and a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Security.
In the lead-up to the invasion, some estimated the Russians would take control of Ukraine within days. But as the conflict entered its third month, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Anna Malyar, said last week that reserves of Russian missiles have “more than halved” since Feb. 24.
More evidence that Russia could be running short of its most expensive missiles comes from the increased use of cheaper, but more dangerous, “dumb” bombs. So called because they lack the microchips, sensors and satellite positioning systems, such weapons are increasingly likely to miss their targets and kill civilians.
“We think that speaks to challenges that the Russians are having with (precision-guided missile) replenishment,” a senior US Defense Department official told reporters in Washington last week.
Missile inventories are a closely guarded secret even in peacetime. All the more so in a war where information is a weapon and rumors have the power to undermine morale.
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace claimed last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use the May 9 Victory Day celebration to declare full-out war against Ukraine and announce mass mobilization of the population.
This prompted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to rubbish fear-inducing claims Wednesday.
“It’s not true,” Peskov said. “It’s nonsense.”
But the Russians have not addressed the speculation about the country’s missile reserves.
Instead, Russia’s Defense Ministry published a video Tuesday of three Oniks anti-ship missiles it claimed were used to strike Ukrainian military infrastructure near Odessa.
Intended, no doubt, to project an image of force, the thundering vertical rise into the sky and the boom that accompanied the missiles’ horizontal course change, sending them off toward their targets, only raised fresh speculation about the state of Russian missile reserves.
The Institute for the Study of War, which provides daily analysis of the conflict, said the unusual use of an anti-ship missile against a land target “may suggest that Russian forces are experiencing shortages of other types of long-range precision guided munitions necessary to disrupt Ukrainian logistics.”
Williams said: “It’s a sign that they are reaching pretty deep into their cache.”
Anti-ship missiles, he said, are generally more expensive because they are equipped with radars or infrared “seekers” that allow the missile to follow and strike a moving target. Land-based precision-guided missiles, in contrast, are directed by satellite toward a programmed location.
The Russians may have opted for the Oniks missile because the Ukrainian navy poses no great threat in the current conflict, but that calculation would be a grave error should the fight widen to include NATO countries.
“If there was a NATO intervention in Ukraine it would be coming from the air and a lot from the sea,” Williams said. “I would want to preserve these kind of capabilities against that contingency.”
Malyar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, noted that the sanctions and export controls imposed on Russia by western nations, including Canada, will hamper Russia’s ability to obtain the components necessary to build new precision-guided missiles as the current supply draws down.
But Russian weapons producers are also in a race to find alternative sources that will allow them to continue serving the country’s military.
Tactical Missiles Corp., a weapons manufacturer northwest of Moscow that produces a range of missile, was sanctioned by Canada on Feb. 24, the day of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.
In March, the company’s general director said that it had found a domestic replacement for engines in its cruise missiles and infrared homing heads for air-to-air missiles.
“They may be able to find a way around it,” Williams said, just as North Korea and Iran have been able to continue building missiles despite economic sanctions and export controls.
The problem will be to continue producing missiles at the same rate they are being fired.
“They’re not like artillery shells where you can just pump them out like crazy,” he said. “In the long run, they’re not going to be able to keep up production with demand.”
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