FROM kamikaze robots behind enemy lines to Pelican missiles, Ukraine’s lethal new arsenal is striking the heart of Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
Kyiv is rapidly developing long-range and ballistic missiles to overwhelm Russia’s air defences with unrelenting attacks – with Moscow rocked by a massive drone onslaught just days ago.
Almost five years after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s deep strikes inside Russia could force the tyrant’s hand, experts say.
Justin Bronk, an expert in air power and military technology at RUSI, told The Sun: “Putin can choose to end the war at any point.
“He will do so if he perceives the risk of doubling down on more aggression.
“For Ukrainians this is an existential non-discretionary war of national survival.”
Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces unleashed the largest attack on Moscow since the start of war on Sunday – on the final day of Russia’s election.
Russian officials were left reeling after 450 drones swarmed the capital followed by a volley of state-of-the-art missiles.
The strikes left two dead, with gaping craters in apartment blocks and huge plumes of smoke filling the sky.
Zelensky confirmed Kyiv had hit a “key” Russian oil facility and a logistics site in the region – which supplies more than a third of Moscow’s fuel as well as aviation fuel for the military.
Ukraine’s defence minister said attacking such facilities “directly undermines the enemy’s ability to continue its war of aggression and supply its military formations”.
Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin accused Ukraine of trying to “disrupt” the country’s parliamentary elections.
The tyrant’s party is set for a convincing win in what has been widely described as a “sham” election – used by Putin as evidence of public support for his war policies.
Fears have been rising that the results will be falsified – used by Putin as evidence of widespread public support for his war policies.
Justin said: “It represents a successful, politically poignant strike by the Ukrainians at the heart of the Russian government’s seat of power.
“It’s about cost and political damage to the image of control that Putin wants to portray to ordinary Russians and particularly to Russian elites.”
Zelensky revealed the operation involved an FP-7 ground-launched ballistic missile – Pelican.
Designed and built in Ukraine by defence start-up Fire Point, the missile boasts a maximum range of 124 miles with a 150kg payload and accuracy of 13 metres.
Sunday marked the first official confirmation that the weapon has been used in combat after it finished testing earlier this month.
Justin said: “Ballistic missiles travel much much faster on a high ballistic trajectory.
“They will come down very, very quickly and from a high angle, which makes them almost impossible to intercept.”
Speed also has a direct correlation with range, so the bigger the missile is built the faster and further it will go.
Before the launch, Ukraine relied on its allies for replacement ballistic missiles like the US-made ATACMS.
Meanwhile, the longer-ranged FP-9 missiles were currently undergoing flight tests in Ukraine.
Justin said: “The FP7 and short-to-medium range missile like the FP9 that they’re working on will significantly cut down the number of Russian systems that can intercept them once they’re working.
“They will force the Russians to use more of their stock of larger, longer-ranged surface-to-air missile interceptors.
“And if they can do that cheaply, then that will be a significant draw on Russian defense capability and ultimately economy,.”
Sunday’s blitz also included “the FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichen”, Zelensky added.
The Flamingo, first launched in August 2025, can hit targets more than 3,000km away with a menacing 1,000kg warhead.
It has a six-metre wingspan and reaches speeds of up to 900km/h before decimating its targets.
Compared to a Western-made cruise missile, it’s much cheaper and much bigger.
Justin said: “The Ukrainians have ended up concentrating on the long- range strike campaign, which is causing politically visible constant effect.
“Lots of fire and smoke around major Russian areas from warehouses, oil and gas refineries, and causing economic problems in Russia in order to increase the political pressure on the regime.”
Ukraine also has an enormous variety of one-way attack drones that have relentlessly attacked Russia’s front lines and deep into Moscow.
Justin said: “They’re cheap enough that you can launch them by the hundreds.
“That means Russian air defenses have to deal with hundreds of slow, low flying targets that are moving at lots of different speeds, flight altitudes, with different radar cross-sections.
“The vast majority of them are shot down by Russian air defences but it uses up a lot of air defence capacity for the Russians to deal with.”
The potential targets in the cross hairs of Ukraine’s growing arsenal of drones and ballistic missiles is now “huge”.
Justin said: “You’re looking at Ukrainian UAVs and cruise missiles that can go 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 kilometres.
“The potential number of targets that can be reached within the expanse of Russia, even with convoluted routing to avoid defence concentrations, is huge.”
But it is not only Ukraine’s long-range campaign causing havoc for Putin.
UAVs launched from the frontlines have been used to destroy Russian vehicles supplying the Kremlin’s troops.
Justin said: “That is having significantly more effect, especially in the south, over the last six months than it would have had previously.
“Russia’s ground-based air defence is much less dense than it used to be because they’ve had to disperse a lot of it back into Russia to defend against the long-range strike campaign.”
As part of what it calls Operation Vivaldi, Ukraine is also airlifting so-called kamikaze ground robots and dropping them behind enemy lines on the battlefield for the first time.
Robots are sent ahead of infantry to harass Russian forces from behind – controlled by pilots hidden in bunkers tens of kilometers away.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/17039801/ukraine-strikes-moscow-putin-hand/