Russia is now using its “scarce and expensive” weapons against Ukraine as the war has gone on for much longer than predicted, according to the UK.
The Ministry of Defence claimed that the night before Russia held its annual Victory Parade on May 9 in Moscow, the Kremlin ordered eight cruise missiles to attack Ukraine.
While Russia has been bombarding Ukraine and its citizens with such weapons for months, these particular items were supposedly different.
It claimed Moscow had launched SS-N-30a SAGARIS land attack cruise missiles (LACM) – weapons the MoD describes as “scarce and expensive”.
Up until March, Russia had been using these regularly but then appeared to suspend their use supposedly to “rebuild its reserve stocks”.
The MoD theorised that “in the short-term, Russia likely sees LACMS as a key capability to strike deep into Ukraine to disrupt anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensives.”
Ukraine has been expected to launch a spring counterattack for months now, but president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said they were delayed because not all of the equipment from its Western allies has arrived.
Senior Ukrainian officials have tried to lower expectations for any such counteroffensive, while also denying Russian claims that Kyiv is behind drone assaults on the Kremlin.
British intelligence suggested that Russia may see these cruise missiles as “having an important role in any hypothetical conflict with Nato,” even though the North Atlantic alliance has refused to get directly involved with the war.
Ultimately, the UK officials concluded: “How to use these scarce and expensive weapons is one of the numerous dilemmas Russian commanders face because the war in Ukraine has gone on much longer than they originally planned for.”
Russia initially expected to seize the whole of Ukraine by taking control of its capital, Kyiv, within a matter of days back in February 2022 when it invaded.
However, more than a year later, Moscow has shifted its war goals. Now, it wants to consolidate its gains to the east and the south of Ukraine, where it has illegally annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.