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Russia Has Launched Nuclear Missiles Into Ukraine
But it’s not what you think.
The brutal and nonsensical invasion of Ukraine has plunged the world back into Cold War tensions and placed the world on high nuclear alert. Putin’s constant threats to use nuclear weapons were only quelled when the ally he relies upon the most, China, condemned his atomic tantrums (read more here). Yet, despite this, Russia has recently fired nuclear missiles at residential areas of one of Ukraine’s largest cities, Lviv. So why has Putin used such a weapon? Why hasn’t Lviv been flattened? And why could this counterintuitively be good news for Ukraine?
First, let’s get to know this missile. Putin fired an X-55 nuclear cruise missile designed and built by the Soviet Union. These were specifically designed to carry thermonuclear payloads of up to 200 ktn (13 times more explosive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima) and to be launched from fighter bomber aircraft such as the Su-30s the Russian Air Force currently uses. With a simple radar guidance system, X-55s can target specific coordinates and, thanks to their powerful yet efficient turbofan propulsion system, travel up to 2,500 km at a maximum speed of Mach 0.75. But this firepower doesn’t come cheap. An X-55 costs the equivalent of $13 million per missile without the nuclear bomb!
