the question is how many precision weapons Moscow still has

Dozens of very expensive missiles, some worth $13 million each, are fired by the Russian army in a single day. And they are just as easily knocked down again. A video of one of the Kalibr cruise missiles, which Bellingcat researcher Christo Grozev shared on Wednesday, shows how the low-flying missile is intercepted near a village. Gone $6.5 million.

At lightning speed, a Ukrainian interceptor missile shoots at the Kalibr, only meters above the ground, after which an explosion follows. In another video, a Kalibr is shot down near Kyiv by the German missile system Iris-T. While bystanders are terrified by the explosion, a second Russian cruise missile approaches. This too is intercepted above the same spot. Residents watching from their garden laugh with joy.

The massive missile attacks that Russia has been carrying out against Ukrainian infrastructure since October are by no means cheap. And they mean that Moscow is rapidly running out of its already dwindling supply of precision weapons. On Tuesday alone, in the heaviest missile attacks since the invasion, more than 90 high-tech missiles were fired by bombers and naval vessels, according to the Ukrainian high command.

Expensive missiles

On October 10, when the rocket offensive began to cut off the light and water supply in Ukraine, 84 Kalibr and other very expensive rockets were fired. The authoritative business magazine Forbeswhich tracks the cost of the war, estimates that these two days cost the Kremlin between $1.1 and $1.6 billion.

“The Russian military likely used a significant portion of its remaining precision weapons,” the US military think tank Institute for the Study of War said of Tuesday’s attack. “It is depleting its supply of highly accurate weapon systems.”

According to the institute, which closely monitors the war, Russia will soon have to slow down the pace of the devastating campaign against power plants, among other things, because a shortage of modern missiles is imminent. It is unclear how many cruise missiles and other precision weapons Russia had available before the invasion. The Pentagon estimated after six weeks of war that the Russians had already used some 1,400 missiles.

Slim down

Even then, the supply of cruise missiles would have shrunk considerably, according to Washington. But the US did not say how large that stock was. Nearly two months later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the number of missiles used had reached 2,154. Moscow tried hard to replenish its missile stocks, but economic sanctions made this difficult.

This became clear in June, when the Air Force suddenly started using the Kh-22: an old, less accurate missile from the Soviet era. Although the missile was designed to attack naval vessels, it was used in Ukraine to destroy targets on land.

The fact that the cruise missile need is still high is also apparent these days. For example, the Russian army has been using S-300 missiles in recent weeks to target Mikolaiv, among others, while they are actually intended to shoot down fighter planes worth tens of millions of dollars. Also in September near Zaporizhia a convoy was attacked with such an air defense missile, killing 25 civilians.

‘Defeat inevitable’

“The use of this missile to attack ground targets is almost certainly due to a shortage of ammunition, particularly precision missiles,” the British Ministry of Defense concluded. But London did not want to say how many high-tech weapons Moscow still has.

The Ukrainian army and intelligence services did release figures last month. According to Kyiv, the Russians would have already used two-thirds of their advanced missiles by mid-October. Of the arsenal of 1,844 modern missiles with which Russia started the war, 609 are said to remain, according to the Ukrainians. Stocks of Kalibr’s, the counterpart to the US Tomahawk cruise missile, had dwindled from 500 to 272, according to Kyiv.

Of the state-of-the-art Kh-101, one of the most expensive precision weapons at $13 million, and the Kh-555, Moscow is said to have only 213 out of 444. The Kh-555 will cost $4 million each, according to Forbes. After the attacks of the past few weeks, the arsenal has shrunk even further. “By deploying hundreds of precision missiles against civilian targets,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted, “the aggressor is reducing its ability to strike military targets.” Russia’s military defeat is inevitable.”