Russia claimed that the British Storm Shadow cruise missile was downed
The Russian Ministry of Defense has made a claim for the first time in its daily report on the downing of the Storm Shadow cruise missile supplied to Ukraine by the UK. In the post on Telegram, it was announced that air defense systems destroyed 7 HARM anti-radiation missiles, 1 Storm Shadow long-range cruise missile and 10 HIMARS missiles throughout the day.
Recently, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace stated in the House of Commons that the long-range Storm Shadow missiles promised to Ukraine by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak were delivered to Ukraine. Russian officials and military experts had issued a stern warning about the issue.
According to a report by the EurAsian Times, some military experts in Russia had assured that Storm Shadow would not pose an extraordinary problem for Russia, as the country’s air defense systems had already shown that they could intercept and shoot down the Anglo-French missile.
For example, Alexey Leonkov, the famous Russian military expert and editor of Arsenal Otechestva magazine, states that Russian air defense systems have demonstrated the ability to down the Storm Shadow missiles in Syria. “Our air defense systems first encountered them during an attack on Damascus on April 14, 2018,” Leonkov said. Those missiles were down then.”
The Storm Shadow missile is capable of destroying bunkers, hardened infrastructure and other mobile-fixed targets. The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Saturday (May 13) that Ukrainian planes had hit two industrial facilities in the Russian-controlled city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine with British-supplied Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles. According to the report by Reuters, the missiles hit a polymer-producing factory and a meat-processing factory in Luhansk.
