Russian Iskander Missile Hit Ukraine HQ but Warhead Didn’t Detonate

Russia struck Ukraine’s Cabinet headquarters with a cruise missile on Sunday, but photos show that while the weapon crashed into the building, its warhead likely failed to detonate.

Ukrainian officials said that an Iskander-launched cruise missile had hit the government building during Russia’s latest wave of drone and missiles, its largest since the war began.

New photos of the site show what appears to be the remains of the missile in a battered but structurally intact room, indicating that its warhead didn’t trigger.

While it’s unclear what payload the missile was carrying, the incident could signal a reliability issue with one of Russia’s advanced precision weapons. However, such failures can happen with missiles in wartime.

Katarina Mathernova, the European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine, posted the images to social media on Monday after visiting the building.

One of the photos captured a large, round piece of wrecked metal with turbine blades, closely resembling a turbojet or turbofan engine used by Russia’s cruise missiles.

Another piece of the debris was labeled in Cyrillic as “Filter FT-1,” a reported component of the TRDD-50 engine that’s known to power the Russian Iskander-K missile.

The photos also showed a breached wall in the Cabinet building where the missile likely entered, along with the charred remains of parts of the headquarters.

The internal damage likely stemmed from a fire that Ukrainian authorities said broke out after the missile hit the building. Local media reported that the missile’s fuel tanks started the blaze.

But, apart from its scorched interior, the Cabinet building remained mostly structurally intact. Ground-launched Iskander-K missiles generally carry warheads with a mass of 450 to 500 kg, or 990 to 1,100 pounds.

“Only thanks to the missile failing to fully detonate, the entire building was not reduced to rubble,” Mathernova wrote. “And thanks to the rapid action of Ukraine’s amazing rescue services — true heroes — the fire was contained to the three floors, before it would swallow the rest of the building.”

European and Ukrainian officials have condemned the missile strike on the Cabinet building as a sign that Russia continues to act in bad faith despite courting ceasefire talks with the US. The Iskander-K’s missile variants, the 9M728 and the newer 9M729, are precision-guided munitions.

“The evidence of this existential battle is right in front of us: Putin is deliberately targeting the country’s lifelines — its government, its energy, its people,” Mathernova wrote.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Monday that he had spoken to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the strike.

“These strikes kill civilians, including children, and destroy our infrastructure,” Yermak wrote in a post on X. “For the first time, the enemy attacked the building of the Government of Ukraine — Iskander missile strike.”

Ukraine’s air command said the Iskander-K missile was one of nine cruise missiles launched by Russia on Sunday, as part of a massive wave of long-range exploding drones and decoys. Kyiv said its air force detected at least 810 drones that night.

Russia has regularly attacked Ukrainian cities with its Iskander launchers, and is often accused of using them to target infrastructure and civilian areas.

In August 2023, one of its most high-profile strikes with the launcher involved a hit with an Iskander-M ballistic missile that killed seven people at a landmark drama theater in the city of Chernihiv.