Ukraine hits two Russian Iskander launchers in Bryansk region

Ukraine’s armed forces have hit two Russian Iskander ballistic missile launchers and a Pantsir-S1 air defense system in Russia’s Bryansk region, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on November 7.

The strike came hours after Russia fired 36 ballistic missiles and 172 drones at Ukraine overnight. Every missile was aimed at Kyiv and the surrounding region, where Russian forces targeted energy facilities and other infrastructure.

“Good news came from the Bryansk region, where two Iskander tactical missile system launchers were hit. The extent of the damage is still being clarified, but the significance of this strike is already clear. Every Iskander launcher put out of action reduces the Russian army’s ability to carry out ballistic strikes on Ukrainian cities,” the General Staff said.

The Iskander-M is a road-mobile missile system mounted on a large wheeled vehicle. Each launcher carries two ballistic missiles with a range of up to about 500 km (310 miles), and Russia has used them throughout the war to strike Ukrainian cities, military sites and power facilities. Because the missiles fly a fast, high trajectory, they leave little warning time, and only a handful of Western systems such as Patriot can reliably intercept them.

Bryansk borders Ukraine’s Chernihiv and Sumy regions to the north. Kyiv sits within Iskander range of the border area, though the General Staff did not link these particular launchers to the overnight attack.

The Pantsir-S1 hit in the same region combines anti-aircraft missiles and rapid-fire cannons on one vehicle. Russia uses it to protect airfields, launch sites and other high-value positions from drones, cruise missiles and aircraft. “One of those that were supposed to cover Russian facilities from the air,” the General Staff said of the system.

Ukrainian forces have gone after Iskander launchers before, often with long-range drones or Western-supplied missiles once a launcher is found. In one earlier case, Ukraine destroyed a Russian Iskander system in a drone strike. Russia does not publish its losses, and the launchers are hard to track because they move often and fire from different positions.

The overnight Russian barrage hit substations in the Kyiv region that connect the Rivne and Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plants to Kyiv and central Ukraine. Substations were also damaged in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, and twelve regions besides Kyiv came under attack, Ekonomichna Pravda reported.

Russia has stepped up ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv in recent months, often pairing large salvos of missiles with waves of drones designed to overwhelm air defenses.