Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed Thursday that it crippled Ukraine’s ability to launch strikes deep inside Russia after it carried out a special operation along with the Defense Ministry against Ukrainian missile production facilities.
The FSB said it had discovered the locations of buildings and air defense systems involved in the production and protection of Ukraine’s Sapsan ballistic missile system, also known by its export designation Hrim-2, in the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
The intelligence agency said the sites were struck by the Russian Armed Forces, eliminating both the threat of Ukrainian missile strikes deep inside Russian territory and the “technical base” for the missile’s production capacity.
An FSB map published by Russian state news agencies claimed to show the potential range of Sapsan/Hrim-2 missiles, which includes the Moscow region and the rest of central Russia, as well as its key ally Belarus.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air, sea and land attacks “disrupted an attempt by the Kyiv regime, in coordination with Western partners, to produce missiles intended for attacks deep into Russian territory.”
It said the strikes were conducted throughout July, targeting Ukrainian design bureaus, rocket fuel production facilities and missile assembly plants in the Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.
The Russian military also said it destroyed four launchers of the Western-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missile system and a U.S.-made target detection and guidance radar in the Dnipropetrovsk region alone.
The FSB claimed that Ukraine had developed the Sapsan/Hrim-2 with financial support from “specialists” of an unidentified Western European country.
There was no immediate response from authorities in Kyiv to Moscow’s claims.
Ukrainian media previously reported that the Sapsan missile completed combat testing in May after successfully striking a Russian military target at a range of almost 300 kilometers (186 miles).
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