Russia is likely removing the nuclear warheads from aging cruise missiles and firing them into Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defense said on Saturday.
The improvisation indicates how depleted Russia’s stocks of long-range missiles are, it said.
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The defense ministry said that open source imagery appeared to show an AS-15 KENT air-launched cruise missile that had been shot down in Ukraine.
The missile was designed in the 1980s to be used as a nuclear delivery system, and the department noted that the nuclear warhead had likely been replaced with ballast, some kind of heavy material to balance it.
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