Ukraine faces bigger threat than Russian cruise missiles - Defense Express

He said this on Espreso TV.

"Regarding the information about Russia's plans to produce 700 cruise missiles of various types and 215,000 bombs next year, we are not talking about orders, but about the distribution of ammunition to military units in the so-called Russian Aerospace Forces. And this does not apply to all combat units and supply depots, it refers to 19 items distributed across 14 military units, most of which are storage warehouses," explained the editor-in-chief of Defence Express.

According to him, there is no question of 700 cruise missiles, as 125 Kh-101 missiles and 404 guided missiles of various types, including anti-radar missiles, as well as Kh-59, are listed. There are even Kh-29TD missiles, which have a limited range and are not cruise missiles. But this is not the whole array.

"There is more threatening information regarding the transfer of 10,000 new S-8KL unguided missiles. This is a new type used by aircraft such as Su-25, attack aircraft and attack helicopters. It is an 80 mm cluster unguided missile, which is a version of the S-8. It was demonstrated only this year. Work on it was completed in 2022. It was reported that there is an order. The significance of the S-8KL should be taken into account because 5,000 of the 10,000 missiles will be transferred to the Army Aviation Training Centre, and another 5,000 will be sent to the temporarily occupied Crimea, to Dzhankoy, where the Russian Federation's military base is located. The aspect is that this is a cluster unguided missile, which is fired from standard B-8 units. Its range has not been declared, but it is said to be over 4 km. The declared weight is 7.7 kg. Moreover, the projectile contains about 20 separate fragmentation and accumulation elements," the military expert noted.

Oleh Katkov explained that Russia's use of such shells has low accuracy, but with cluster unguided shells, the low accuracy is levelled out due to the area of damage. He also added that this is a new development that was demonstrated only this year.

• On December 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a press conference to summarize the year: he said that the goals of the war against Ukraine remained unchanged.
• On December 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that after joining NATO, Finland might have problems with Russia. He also announced the creation of the Leningrad Military District.
• On December 21, Putin instructed the Defense Ministry to hold the autumn conscription in 2024 using a unified military registration register and electronic draft notices