Index – Foreign countries – Russia’s war in Ukraine – Index’s Friday news summary

As we wrote earlier, on the night of Thursday, April 11, Russian troops completely destroyed the thermal power plant in Trypyla near Kiev as a result of a powerful rocket attack. Now it has also been revealed how the attack was carried out.

The Defense Express Ukrainian military portal reported that, according to their sources, they carried out a strike against the power plant with one of Russia’s latest missiles, the H-69 subsonic missile. The portal wrote that

As it was written, the remains of the H-69 were found at the site, and the missile could have been fired from a distance of up to 400 kilometers, which is a greater distance than usual. It was noted that both Russian Su-34 and Su-35 tactical fighters are capable of carrying the weapon.

According to Defense Express, the H-69 features innovations over previous Russian missiles primarily in terms of navigation system, but its biggest advantage may be that

They added that the warhead of the H-69 is smaller than, for example, that of the Kinzza, but it can be much more dangerous, which was proven by the attack in Trypilja. “First of all, the effective strike unfortunately proves that the H-69 can penetrate the apparently exhausted Ukrainian air defenses. Secondly, launching it from tactical aircraft eliminates the characteristic of large-scale missile attacks, that the Russian side usually launches the missiles from the (much more limited available) Tu-95MS and MiG-31K strategic bombers, the take-off of which is regularly detected by the Ukrainian side in the before attacks, the portal wrote, adding that all this also means that the Russians can fire many more missiles from this missile than in one attack.

They also added that the mentioned range of 400 km (taking into account that Russian planes can approach the state border or front lines within 50-70 km before being launched, and that possibly from the airspace of the ally Belarus they can launch missiles) also means that

The portal also created a map in this regard, where their range is clearly visible (although only those distances that can be reached without the help of Belarus have been removed here).

In the end, Defense Express also touched on the fact that the H-69 has already been deployed by the Russian side several times. Officially, its name was mentioned for the first time in connection with a strike in February 2024, but based on previous (subsequently confirmed) rumors, the Russians could have used it several times already in 2023.