Sanctions do not yet prevent Russia from continuing to produce cruise missiles, - NYT
Some of the missiles that Russia launched against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in late November were manufactured several months after the West imposed sanctions to deprive the Russian Federation of the components necessary to manufacture these weapons.
This is reported by Censor.NET with reference to the BBC.
Experts from the British Conflict Armament Research group examined the remnants of Kh-101 cruise missiles discovered in Kyiv after the November 23 attack. The report, which investigators released Monday, said one of the missiles was made this summer and the other after September, according to markings on the munitions.
As The New York Times notes, Russia's continued production of advanced guided missiles like the Kh-101 suggests it has found ways to acquire semiconductors and other materials despite the sanctions.
Researchers also suggest that she had a significant stockpile of components before the war.
This is one of the latest studies by the independent British group Conflict Armament Research, which identifies and tracks weapons and ammunition in wars, the NYT reports.
A group of British researchers arrived in Kyiv on the eve of a new attack at the invitation of the Ukrainian special services.
During four previous trips to Kyiv since the invasion, Conflict Armament Research experts found that almost all of the modern Russian military equipment they examined, such as encrypted radios and laser rangefinders, was made from Western semiconductors, the paper said.
Investigators could not determine whether the remains of the X-101 they examined belonged to missiles that reached their targets and exploded, or were intercepted in flight and shot down.
Kh-101 missiles are marked with numbers. According to British experts, the first three numbers represent the factory where the missile was made, followed by another three-digit code that identifies one of the two known types of Kh-101 missiles and two numbers that indicate when it was made. The last line of five digits is believed to indicate the missile batch and serial number.
The NYT cites an anonymous comment from a US official who noted that Russia is apparently using new munitions alongside older ones due to a critical shortage of weapons.
Pentagon officials believe that since the beginning of the war, Russia has fired thousands of long-range cruise missiles, as well as short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, at targets in Ukraine.
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On November 23, the day of the large-scale shelling of Ukraine, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that Moscow's stockpile of high-precision weapons had "significantly decreased" and that Russia was unlikely to be able to replenish it quickly "due to trade restrictions on microchips and other components," the NYT recalls.
However, according to Damien Splitters, who led the investigation at Conflict Armament Research, it is difficult to say that the Russians lack weapons.
"The fact that these cruise missiles were created very recently can confirm this," the American publication quoted the researcher as saying.
