Moscow Increased Production of Missile that Struck Kids’ Hospital Eightfold

The Kh-101 is one of Russia's most advanced cruise missiles. Moscow used it to strike the Ohmatdyt children's Hospital in Kyiv on Monday, July 8.

Now Russia is producing almost eight times more Kh-101 long-range cruise missiles as it was at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Financial Times reported.

In 2021, Russia produced only 56 Kh-101 missiles. Last year, Russia produced 420 of them.

“Western technology is allowing them to build these smarter missiles, which allow their terror attacks to get past our struggling air defenses,” Olena Bilousova, a research lead on sanctions at the KSE Institute in Kyiv, told the FT.

A Kh-101 missile, that was used in January, contained 16 items of Western-made electronics. Two of the components were from the Swiss company STMicroelectronics, while American chipmakers Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and Intel produced the rest.

All of the goods were mostly intended for civilian use – and some are quite old. An analysis of Russian applications by the FT shows how Russian companies were able to obtain parts identical to those used in that Kh-101 simply by buying them on the open market and importing them through China in 2023, the FT writes.

According to an analysis by the Office of the President of Ukraine provided to the FT, the Kh-101 could contain more than 50 different foreign-made parts.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has established that Moscow used a Kh-101 cruise missile to strike the Ohmatdyt hospital in Kyiv from parts recovered at the site of the tragedy.

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Bellingcat analysts also concluded that a Russian Kh-101 missile carried out the Kyiv hospital attack.

On July 8, Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine with using as many as 38 of ballistic and cruise missiles of different types, killing more than 40 people, 22 of them in the capital.

One of the Russian missiles hit the Ohmatdyt children’s hospital the largest in Ukraine and Europe – where hundreds of children are treated – destroying the building where they receive dialysis treatment.

Medical staff and children were trapped under the rubble, and both its small patients and doctors were injured by flying glass. The institution, where about 7,000 complex operations are performed annually, diagnostics and treatment of hematological diseases, and bone marrow transplants for sick children, has had to suspend its work following the devastating attack.