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Shortly after Russia took over Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, a Ukrainian defense company used a weapons show in Kyiv to unveil its latest project: an anti-ship cruise missile called Neptune.
The new rocket attracted little attention at the time. But he is now in the spotlight after a U.S. defense official said Ukrainian forces used Neptune missiles to strike and sink Russia’s flagship warship, the Moscow, in the Black Sea.
Wednesday’s strike marked a major boost for Ukraine – not only for its military efforts, but also for the local arms industry, despite relying on weapons donated by Western allies.
“For Ukrainians, if they manage to sink this ship or damage it with their own Neptune missiles, this is the first place of pride and useful military ability, as they will be able to keep the Russian fleet at bay,” said Mark Kansian. Senior Adviser on the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Since Russia invaded on February 24, foreign weapons have been dumped in Ukraine. These include US-made anti-weapons, small arms produced in Europe and even anti-aircraft systems designed by Russia.
But Ukraine itself is a significant arms exporter, with a legacy from missile construction dating back to the Soviet era.
Russia was once a key market for the export of these weapons: between 2016 and 2020, 1 in 5 Ukrainian arms exports went to Ukraine’s larger neighbor, according to a follow-up from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But in recent years, Ukrainian weapons have also been developed to fight Russian forces.
The Ukrainian military says its forces fired Neptune anti-ship missiles at Moscow, damaging it and causing it to sink on Thursday. A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that two Neptune missiles had hit the ship.
Moscow said only that a fire on board caused the detonation of ammunition stocks, which caused the evacuation of the crew. The ship later sank due to bad weather while being towed to port, Russia said.
On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had hit the Vizar factory near the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine’s state-owned arms manufacturer, Ukroboronprom, said in a statement on its website that the Vizar plant was involved in the production of both Neptune and Alder precision missiles.
Some Ukrainians saw the sinking of Moscow as a key moment for the local arms industry.
“For the first time, a warship was destroyed by an anti-ship missile made entirely in Ukraine,” Daria Kalenyuk, executive director of the Center for Combating Corruption in Ukraine, wrote on Twitter.
Kalenyuk, a prominent social media activist, said the reported success of the strike showed that Ukraine could handle more modern technological weapons supplied by NATO countries.
Neptune was being developed before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but the takeover helped boost rocket production. The peninsula houses Ukraine’s main naval base and Soviet-era coastal defense systems that once protected the country from attacks on the Black Sea.
The R-360 Neptune itself is based on an old Soviet cruise missile called the Kh-35, which was manufactured in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The company that developed Neptune, Luch Design Bureau, was founded in 1965 and has a long history of designing Soviet rockets.
If the Neptune missiles are fired at Moscow, it will be the first time the weapon has been used in practice, military experts say. The incident also suggested that the cruise missile, which has a range of about 200 miles, could evade missile defense systems such as those aboard a Russian ship.
The ship is equipped with long-range radar and S-300 air defense system, designed to provide protection not only to him but also to the rest of the Russian fleet. The accounts of Ukrainian officials suggest that an air drone was used to disperse defense systems during the attack.
Ukrainian officials said last year that four countries had expressed interest in importing Neptune missile systems for their own use, with Indonesia among those that could receive the first shipment.
But there are also concerns that Ukraine does not have enough weapons at home.
In an interview last year, the director of the Luch design bureau, Oleg Korostelov, said that “due to lack of funding”, his company would be able to deliver only up to 800 of the approximately 2,000 missiles requested by the Ukrainian military.
“Unfortunately, our level of security is low,” he said when asked if Ukraine was ready to defend itself against a full-scale invasion.
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