The British government assumes that Moscow is running out of modern weapons. Therefore, the Russian Air Force is now using anti-ship missiles that are almost 60 years old. The cruise missiles are said to be very imprecise when attacking land targets.
According to British information, the Russian armed forces are also using old anti-ship missiles when bombing targets in Ukraine. Since April, Russian bombers have probably fired dozens of imprecise Kh-22 (NATO designation: AS-4 Kitchen) cruise missiles against land targets, the Ministry of Defense in London said, based on intelligence information. Accordingly, the missiles were originally developed in the 1960s to destroy enemy aircraft carriers with a nuclear warhead.
However, if the missiles are used with a conventional warhead in ground attacks, they are very inaccurate and could cause significant collateral damage and civilian casualties. “Russia is probably resorting to such inefficient weapon systems because of a lack of more precise and modern missiles,” says the British situation report.
The deputy chief of the Ukrainian military intelligence service also sees a lack of ammunition on the Russian side. In the first month of the war, Moscow constantly launched missile attacks against Ukraine, but the shelling has eased somewhat in the past two months, Vadym Skibitsky told the British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday.
“We found that Russia is conducting far fewer missile attacks and using H-22 missiles. These are old Soviet models from the 1970s.” This shows that the Kremlin is running out of rockets and that the country is not in a position to produce quickly because of the sanctions, according to the secret service agent.
