Why did Russia fire a nuclear-capable cruise missile into Ukraine?

Kyivan air defense forces shot down two Russian cruise missiles over the skies of Ukraine on November 17th and at least one of those missiles may have been capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. 

Photo by: George Chernilevsky, own work, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-55#/media/File:H-55_AS-15_Kent_2008_G1.jpg

The downed Kh-55 missile, also known as the X-55, was discovered by Ukrainian forces and set off alarm bells as the country’s defense media speculated about the meaning behind the use of a nuclear-capable cruise missile. 

Ukrainian news outlet Defense Express reported that the missile was found with a block screwed into the place where a nuclear warhead would normally be found. 

“Instead of a warhead, a block was ‘screwed’ into this Rashist missile, which acted as an imitator of a nuclear warhead,” Defense Express commented. 

Experts from Defense Express also gave a number of reasons as to why Russia may have decided to use the Kh-55 missile against Ukraine. 

Russia’s use of a Kh-55 cruise missile may have been another indication that the Kremlin has depleted its conventional missile stockpiles.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told the Telegraph on October 28th that he believed Russia had exhausted its “core stocks” of Iskander ballistic missiles. 

“The enemy is facing severe shortages of the Iskander missiles. They’ve already used up their core stocks of them,” Ihnat told the Telegraph.

But Defense Express also postulated that the Kh-55 missile may have been used in an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses, a theory that only reinforces the argument that Russia’s stockpiles are running low. 

At the beginning of the war, Russian forces used expendable materials like Soviet TU-243 drones to overload Ukrainian defenses.

 However, it wouldn’t make sense to now use advanced—and difficult-to-replace—nuclear-capable missiles to overload air defense systems. 

The Kh-55 was originally developed in the 1970s by the Soviet Union and was officially adopted into service in the early-1980s.

Based on the U.S. BGM-109 Tomahawk, it was coincidentally manufactured in Ukraine and nicknamed the Tomahawk-ski. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was left with roughly 1612 Kh-55 cruise missiles in its arsenal but these were transferred to Russia in the late-1990s according to the Arms Control Association. 

The Kh-55 was originally meant to carry a nuclear warhead with a payload blast yield of 50 kilotons, about twice the power of the U.S. bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 that ended World War II. 

The last time a Kh-55 cruise missile was reportedly used was during the Syrian Civil War. On November 17th, 2015, a Russian Tupolev Tu-95MS strategic bomber struck 14 Islamic State in Syria with Kh-55 cruise missiles.