Russian Federation fires an Kh-35 anti-ship missile at Kharkiv
During a nighttime combined attack on Kharkiv, a massive raid by Russian drones was preceded by a strike by an Kh-35 anti-ship cruise missile.
The Office of the Prosecutor General reported on this.
On June 5, at about 00:30, the Russian armed forces launched a missile attack on the Sloboda district of Kharkiv. The hit was recorded on an open land plot within the transport infrastructure. Previously, the Russian army used an Kh-35 missile.
Half an hour after the strike, the enemy launched a massive attack with attack drones on a residential area of the Sloboda district of the city. The UAVs hit two residential buildings and the adjacent infrastructure.
A Su-34M aircraft presumably launched the Kh-35 at the Ukrainian city. Russian tactical aviation occasionally uses these missiles to hit important remote targets in the combat zone.
During the Russian-Ukrainian war, the enemy repeatedly used Kh-35s “on the ground” to knock out Ukrainian radar stations and anti-aircraft radars.
The unusual use of such missiles is due to their long range (up to 500 kilometers) and integrated active-passive homing head, which is most likely used to target the radiation of operating radars.
It is possible that during the night attack on Kharkiv, the missile strike was part of a tactic that involved creating a “corridor” in the air defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the safe passage of a group of attack drones. Nonetheless, for unknown reasons, the targeting was disrupted.
However, in some cases, the Kh-35 was also used as a conventional cruise missile with satellite guidance against ground targets.
The most active use of these missiles can be recorded in 2024 in the Kharkiv region, where they were used to strike the city at least five times.
In particular, in July last year, for unknown reasons, the Russian invaders targeted the infrastructure of the defunct Kharkiv airport, hitting the ATCR-33S-NG air traffic control radar. Before the invasion, the latter was used as a surveillance radar to coordinate the landing and takeoff of aircraft, but it could not be used for air defense tasks due to its short range.
The Ukrainian military also uses Neptune anti-ship missiles to strike ground targets. More about this can be found in the article “Neptune Missiles: Destruction of Russian Warehouses and Oil Depots in 2024”.
