Russia's latest attack with Iskander missiles follows a deadly pattern

On March 3rd, Russia launched an Iskander-M missile against the city of Pokrovsk. It was an attack that injured female two civilians and damaged buildings at the epicenter of the strike, but it was also an attack Moscow has used against Ukrainian civilians in the past.

Just a week before the Iskander attack on Pokrovsk, Russia fired a missile at a village in the suburbs of Zaporizhzhia that the Ukrainian state media outlet Ukrainiform reported killed one person and injured three others. But this wasn't the most devastating Iskander missile attack.

The Iskander Short Range Ballistic Missile System is one of the most powerful weapons in the Russian military arsenal but it has also become a tool of terror in Moscow’s fight to conquer Ukraine. Let's look at another Iskander attack that proved to be one of the deadliest of the war. 

You may not have heard of the Iskander but the missiles have been at the heart of some of Russia’s most terrible attacks on civilian centers in Ukraine, one of which was a strike that killed 52 people in Hroza, Kharkiv in October 2023. 

“Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky said about the attack at the time according to The Guardian. 

The Hroza attack was one of the most costly of the war in terms of civilian casualties but it wasn’t the first time an Iskander missile had been used to attack non-military targets in the war according to The Independent’s Tom Watling. 

Watling explained that “Iskander short-range ballistic missiles have become common in Russian attacks on Ukraine, largely because they can travel around 300 miles,” but that isn’t the only reason why the missile systems are useful. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin

Iskander missiles are part of a portable system that operates off the back of a platform. A single missile can be launched and then the whole system can pack up and move to a new location, making the Iskander difficult to attack. 

Unlike other systems, the Iskander system can carry two missiles as part of its weapons complement and they can be used together or launched at different targets. This not only increases the system's firepower but also its deadliness. 

The dual missiles of the Iskander system have allowed Russian forces to fire successful “double tap” attacks against Ukrainian targets. Watling described this as an attack that hits a target and is followed up by a second missile.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Boevaya Mashina 

This type of “double tap” attack is what Russia allegedly launched against the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in August 2023. The New York Times reported at the time that two Iskander missiles were launched thirty-seven minutes apart. 

The Iskander attack on Pokrovsk in August seriously damaged 12 multistory buildings and killed 9 people. It also injured 82 others, among whom were several police officers and rescue workers that had rushed to the attack area to assist. 

Such destructive power makes sense when you consider the design of the Iskander missile, which comes in both a ballistic and cruise missile variety, according to the military website Militarnyi. The missiles also come in several different models. 

Powered by a solid fuel source, the Iskander missile is a single-stage rocket that has an inseparable head that controls the weapon's flight path and varies its trajectory in flight to make interceptions more difficult for its foes.  

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Boevaya Mashina 

The missile weighs close to 8,400 pounds and its warhead weighs over 1,000 pounds depending on the use case. Tom Watling noted the Iskander can be fitted with cluster, fuel-air explosives, and bunker-busting munitions. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Boevaya Mashina 

There is also an electro-magnetic pulse missile and arming the Iskander with a nuclear warhead is also possible. This makes the missile system one of the most versatile tools Russia can employ on the battlefield. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Vitaly V. Kuzmin, CC BY-SA 3.0

However, while the Iskander is undoubtedly being used against the Ukrainian military, it is the attacks on civilians that make their way into the news since such a system should never be used against non-combatants in a conflict zone. 

The most infamous use of an Iskander missile against Ukrainian civilians was the attack launched a restaurant in Kramatorsk in June 2023. The Washington Post reported 11 people were killed and 61 were injured in the Iskander attack. 

Russia's most recent Iskander attack against Pokrovsk on March 3rd resulted in "at least 12 high-rise buildings and 13 private homes were damaged, as well as educational institutions, a shop, and a bus," Ukrainska Pravda noted, reporting that the information came from the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor’s Office.