Ukraine’s home-made Flamingo missiles have struck a key Russian military facility more than 300 miles behind the war’s front lines.
The long-range missiles, which only entered service last autumn, targeted the Titan-Barrikady research and production centre in the city of Volgograd, overnight on Friday.
Confirming the strike, which caused a fire at the plant, Volodymyr Zelensky said the facility was a “just target for our long-range sanctions”.
“It is a major industrial complex where the enemy produces artillery systems and specialised military equipment,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
Launchers for Russia’s Yars nuclear missile system are manufactured at the facility, as well as those for the Iskander ballistic missile.
Titan-Barrikady is considered one of the leading centres of Russia’s military development. Besides the launchers, it produces an array of weaponry, including artillery systems and anti-ship missile systems.
Part of Roscomos, the state-owned space agency, the complex is one of the few Russian sites that can manufacture military equipment all the way from the first design stage to the final production.
Denis Shtilerman, the co-founder of Fire Point, which manufactures the Flamingos, posted footage of the launch of five of the missiles on social media.
“Volgograd welcome the seasonal migration of flamingos from Ukraine,” he wrote on X. “To be continued.”
Andrei Bochrov, the governor of the Russian oblast, confirmed that “production facilities” at an unnamed enterprise were damaged in a strike by “high-speed aerial targets”.
He added that 10 people were injured and were receiving medical treatment.
Mr Zelensky announced last week that Kyiv was beginning a 40-day campaign aimed at pressuring Russia to end the war.
Further Ukrainian strikes struck a Pantsir-S1 air defence system and a car ferry in occupied Crimea, where residents have been increasingly cut off from supplies of fuel and other goods by a punishing series of drone attacks along the land-bridge back to Russia.
The Flamingo missile has a reported range of around 2,000 miles. Its development allows Ukraine to carry out heavy strikes deep inside Russia without support from Western partners, a potentially critical development in the war.
Long-range drones have smashed into Russian fuel facilities over the course of the year, cutting output by around 20 per cent.
Ballistic missiles such as the Flamingo travel much faster and carry a significantly heavier payload, bringing sensitive sites such as Titan-Barrikady into fresh danger.
Earlier this month, Flamingo missiles flew 600 miles to strike a factory making components for Russian drones.
They hit the Progress factory in Cheboksary, the capital of Russia’s Chuvash republic, where Moscow has produced antennas that help drones resist electronic jamming.
Russian citizens have begun to bear more of the costs of the war as Ukrainian strikes on fuel facilities have seen supplies of petrol run short.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) said its drones attacked the Vtorovo oil pumping station in Russia’s Vladimir region, near Moscow, for the second time this month.
The station is a key logistics hub used to ship petroleum products to Russian domestic consumers and also for export, the SBU said on Telegram.
Also overnight, Russian strikes on Ukraine killed two people and injured 20, according to Ukrainian authorities.
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