Russian Defense Ministry announced Saturday that Russian forces targeted Ukrainian military airports in the cities of Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk with high-precision missiles, downed two Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters and destroyed 67 military facilities and 24 drones.
The storage facilities for diesel and fuel were destroyed at the Kremenchuk refinery, which was supplying the Ukrainian forces in the central and eastern regions, using long-range precision weapons, the ministry’s official spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a press briefing on Saturday.
Earlier it was reported that on April 1, the Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter fleet quietly crossed a long distance and attacked the petroleum depot in Belgorod, Russia without being detected by the Russian air defense.
Konashenkov noted that over the past night, Russian operational-tactical aviation and missile forces destroyed 24 Ukrainian helicopters in the country, 9 field guns and mortars, and 54 staging sites for combat equipment.
The units of armed forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic established control over a large part of Novobakhmoto region, killing 40 Nazis.
Konashenkov indicated that since the beginning of the special military operation, 124 aircraft, 84 helicopters, so many of drones, tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and a lot of military vehicles affiliated with the Ukrainian forces, were all destroyed.
However Russian MOD didn’t mention particularly which weapons were used to attack military airports in the cities of Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk.
Looks like an air-launched Kh-101 cruise missile flying over Kharkiv. https://t.co/QkPLxcQT6K pic.twitter.com/xv6AHDODjf
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) March 9, 2022
According to recent videos found on several social media sites, it was The Kh-101 air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) launched either from Tu-95 ‘Bear’ or Tu-160 ‘Blackjack’ strategic bombers.
The Kh-101/-102 was developed as a long-range, standoff cruise missile to replace the aging Kh-55 and Kh-555 ALCMs. It travels on a low altitude flight path beneath infrared and radar systems, and its use of radar absorbing composite material makes the missile challenging to detect.
Its accuracy is also believed to be quite high, employing the electronic GLONASS satellite navigation (the Russian equivalent to GPS) and TV terminal guidance.
The Kh-101/-102 ALCM is 7.45 m in length and 0.51 m in diameter. At launch the missile weighs 2,300-2,400 kg and is fired without a booster, using the launching aircraft’s momentum at release to give it initial velocity. The missile uses a TRDD-50A turbofan engine, giving it a cruising speed of Mach 0.58 and a maximum speed of Mach 0.78. The range of the Kh-101/-102 is reported to be between 2,500 km and 2,800 km, although unconfirmed reports by the Russian Ministry of Defense claim its maximum range is 4,500 km. Capable of flying at “tree top levels” around 30 m to 60 m, the missile cruises at an altitude around 6,000 m.7 It has an estimated flight endurance around 10 hours.