Russia and Ukraine are increasingly using new types of weapons
MiG-31K interceptor fighters for the first time carried out the practical application of aeroballistic hypersonic missiles "Dagger" on real targets. The Ministry of Defense reports the destruction of a well-protected, buried ammunition storage and a fuel and lubricants warehouse. Both objects are located on the territory of Western Ukraine.
Strikes on the arsenal in the village of Delyatin, Ivano-Frankivsk region, as well as large fuel depots in the village of Konstantinovka, Mykolaiv region, say that the special operation on demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine has spread to the entire territory of the country.
The Dagger missile system is an aviation version of the Iskander land system. Valery Kashin, the general designer of the Kolomna Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering, said that in total, "seven outwardly identical missiles with ten types of different warheads can be used on it."
They can be nuclear, cluster, consisting of 54 separate combat elements, penetrating, designed to destroy buried, well-protected objects, high-explosive fragmentation, volumetric detonating and winged. The latter make it possible to hit not only the enemy's ground infrastructure facilities, but also to act as an anti-ship weapon.
The official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, notes that "the combat use of the Dagger aviation missile system has confirmed its effectiveness in destroying highly protected special enemy facilities." Strikes by the Dagger complex on the objects of the military infrastructure of Ukraine will continue, Konashenkov said, emphasizing that the Dagger was used "with a conventional warhead."
This is a very important point. There was a Soviet-built facility for storing nuclear weapons in Delyatin. The base is located in a mountainous area, well protected. Until recently, it was used to store combat parts for the Tochka-U missile systems.
It was with this system with a cluster warhead that the city of Donetsk was shelled by the AFU, when 23 people became victims of the strike and another 18 were injured.
In Moscow and Donetsk, the use of "Dot-U" in residential areas has already been called a war crime. The missile fired at Donetsk, as stated by the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin, carried a cluster warhead. Pushilin stressed that by now the Donetsk military has already shot down more than 15 such vehicles, but so far they "have not been loaded with cluster-type ammunition."
As emphasized in the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the use of such ammunition proves that the purpose of the strike was to kill as many civilians as possible. Cluster munitions are banned in almost all European countries, as well as in Australia, Canada, Japan and most other countries. Ukraine, like Russia and the United States, has not joined this convention.
According to the press service of the FSB, after the start of Russia's special military operation, the Ukrainian Navy carried out the installation of minefields on the approaches to the ports of Odessa, Ochakov, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny. In total, about 420 mines of obsolete types of pits (anchor mine) and YOKE (anchor river mine), produced in the first half of the XX century, were installed.
At the onset of stormy conditions, breaks of cables (minreps) connecting mines with bottom anchors began to occur. Mines under the influence of wind and current drift freely in the western part of the Black Sea. The breakage of the minreps indicates an unsatisfactory technical condition of the mines.
At the same time, the Convention on the Placement of Underwater Mines that Automatically Explode from Contact prohibits the anchored, automatically exploding mines from contact, which become especially dangerous when they break off from their minreps.
Taking into account that the areas of the mentioned Ukrainian ports are dominated by surface currents of the southern direction, the possibility of the drift of thwarted mines into the Bosphorus Strait and further into the seas of the Mediterranean basin is not excluded.
The behavior of the Ukrainian military looks more and more like hysteria. What is worth only one episode with the launch of the Soviet Strizh reconnaissance and strike drone from Odessa towards Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Instead of photographic equipment, a 120-kilogram aerial bomb was installed on board.
Perhaps the car was sent to the Crimea, perhaps specifically towards Italy. In any case, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic claims that the drone incident was not directed against Croatia.
"We have to investigate certain issues: how did it happen that an object the size of a plane traveled from Ukraine to Zagreb and was not shot down. It flew over Hungary for more than 40 minutes, over Croatia for less than seven minutes," Zoran Milanovic said.
It is noticeable that the Croatian president carefully chose his expressions. After all, otherwise it would have been necessary to use the 5th article of the NATO charter. And the North Atlantic Alliance would have to act as a party to the conflict in the confrontation between Kiev and Moscow.
Today, another step has been taken for this – the Black Sea has been mined.
