Russia mobilizes Iskander missiles 50 kilometers from Ukraine border

The Ukrainian Armed Forces denounced last Tuesday that Russia has mobilized the Iskander-M division to the Belarusian region of Brest, which is 50 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
26 May 2022 Thursday 07:27
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Russia mobilizes Iskander missiles 50 kilometers from Ukraine border

The Ukrainian Armed Forces denounced last Tuesday that Russia has mobilized the Iskander-M division to the Belarusian region of Brest, which is 50 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

The Iskander is a Russian short-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Two days ago, three missiles of this type hit near Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, causing serious damage to a power station, although without fatalities. The attack on the plant left Merefa, a surrounding town home to some 28,000 people, without power.

Today, the Russian Ministry of Defense has shown images of the launch of such a missile against an unnamed "military target" in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The Iskander has previously been deployed against other Ukrainian cities, ammunition depots and other military targets. This weapon has been used primarily to destroy buildings and infrastructure.

The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987 to ban short- and medium-range missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The range of the Iskander missile -which the USSR began to develop in 1988 after the signing of this treaty- is between 300 and 500 kilometers.

In February 2019, under the mandate of Donald Trump, the United States abandoned this agreement alleging its non-compliance by Russia, which led this country to also abandon it the following day. The treaty was suspended six months later: NATO blamed Russia for the failure of this historic agreement, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev with the aim of reducing the nuclear arsenal of the two world powers. The suspension led the United States to test, in August 2019 - for the first time in 30 years - a medium-range missile that the agreement prohibited.