Some of Ukraine’s Last S-300 Air Defences Destroyed in Russian Iskander-M Ballistic Missile Strike

Drone footage from Ukraine’s Odessa region near the village of Hvardiiske has confirmed the destruction of the Ukrainian Air Force’s few remaining S-300PS air defence systems in a precision strike by a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile system. The S-300PS was considered among the world’s leading air defence systems at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, although its capabilities were far surpassed by the revolutionary S-300PMU that began to enter service in Russia in 1992. Ukraine’s position as a fourth line of defence against a possible NATO attack on the Warsaw Pact led the Soviet Armed Forces to concentrate considerable quantities of advanced equipment on its territory, including a particularly large arsenal of S-300s and other air defence systems. Multiple variants of the S-300, alongside complementary shorter range BuK-M1 systems, formed the core of what was widely considered Europe’s most capable surface-to-air missile network before the start of full scale Russian-Ukrainian hostilities in February 2022.

Although formidable, a major constraint of the Ukrainian air defence network has been its inability to replace either parts lost in combat, or missiles expended during operations, as Soviet production was heavily concentrated in Russia. The issue of serious shortages began to be raised as early as November 2022, when the Ukrainian Air Force warnedthat the inability to procure additional missiles for the S-300 and BuK systems was set to end the service’s ability continue to operate them effectively. Leaks of secret documents from the U.S. Department of Defence in April 2023 showed that there were rising concerns within the Pentagon regarding the state of the Ukrainian Air Force’s surface-to-air missile network due to increasingly serious shortages. With European NATO members that had formerly procured S-300s from the USSR donating all their own systems to Ukraine, the exhaustion of these supplies led the United State and its Western European allies such as Germany and the Netherlands to make large scale donations of the American equivalent to the S-300 system, the MIM-104 Patriot.

Alongside Ukraine’s S-300s, Patriot air defence systems delivered to the country have been singled out for strikes byIskander-M ballistic missilesystems, and have suffered high combat attrition rates as a result. Strikes using the systems have been confirmed by video footage to have destroyed Patriot batteries, radars and command vehicles multiple times, with the first confirmed destruction of a Patriot system on February 23, 2024, while a subsequent strike destroyed another system near the Sergeevka locality the following month. New footage in July 2024 confirmed the destruction of two Patriot batteries in the Odessa region. On August 11 three more batteries and an AN/MPQ-65 radar were reported destroyed in Iskander-M strikes.

Commenting on the Iskander-M’s capabilities which made its attacks extremely difficult to intercept, Ukrainian Air Force official spokesman Igor Ignat observed on May 26: “The Iskander missiles perform evasive manoeuvres in the final phase, thwarting the Patriot’s trajectory calculations… In addition, the Iskander can drop decoys capable of fooling Patriot missiles.” The systems have also been used for precision strikes on a wide range of other high value targets, including personnel concentrations and fighter aircraft. They have also consistently played an important role in efforts by the Russian Defence Ministry to single out Western active duty personnel and contractors operating within Ukraine’s borders for targeting.