The X-22 or KH-22 was born in the USSR to change the course of naval battles, it is powerful and so fast that it can hit the Dnipro building at 5,000 kilometers per hour
The shock wave from the missile that, in a single strike, caused the largest mass murder of civilians in Ukraine was felt throughout most of the city of Dnipro on Saturday night. This is confirmed by some lifeguards participating in the rescue work. They took to the streets as soon as they received the reflection of the outstretched wave without knowing what was happening or where to run. The fire and intense smoke that rose from the rubble of the Peremoh urbanization for hours was responsible for marking the path. But from the first moment of violent emptiness, everyone knew that this was no ordinary bomb.
And that’s not it. The X-22 missile, or KH-22 as it is also known, is a device made to sink aircraft carriers and frigates in naval battles, not a concrete and cement building inland. Hence the Dnipro Armageddon. Peremoh has become another stark symbol of the barbarity of the Russian invasion, with carnage surpassing even the rocket blast that destroyed the Kramatorsk shopping center in June and claimed 20 lives. It is believed that there was also an ‘aircraft carrier killer’, the cause of an unexplained explosion that even volatilized several bodies due to the extremely high temperatures.
The KH-22, possibly fired from a bomber, this time hit the center of a huge building. Simply, the two central blocks have disappeared. This allows you to see the other side of the city. There were 72 apartments of which no trace remains. According to the authorities, another two hundred homes have been damaged and it is not excluded that the sides of the complex will collapse. At least 1,100 residents are at risk of being left without shelter amid the grief of a devastated, dark and frozen city where some of the children who have fallen among the rubble have lost their dreams.
There is quite an extensive wrecking circle around Peremoh. Hundreds of apartments have lost their windows. The door frames have been thrown away. Some roofs have also been blown off. Reality has become imperfect. The intensity of the explosion was so great that 38 cars and vans were reduced to shrapnel and metal balls. The mayor, Boris Filatov, claims that everything will get worse. Nighttime temperatures “have dropped to two degrees below zero”, significantly reducing the chances of survival in rooms without windows, doors or electricity. Facing the morning sometimes depends on a blanket. Hell has no flames. It’s a winter behind a shock wave.
They did not know it, but when Russia fired the KH-22 missile, they were already doomed. It is a long-range anti-ship projectile designed by the former Soviet Union to transfer artillery warfare to the sea. The warhead weighs nearly a thousand kilograms. It’s easy to imagine the devastation a ton of explosives can wreak, whether against the metal hull of a ship or against a brick wall. It only escapes if the projectile, for whatever reason, does not see its victim. In Dnipro, an old woman survived in the ruins of her house on the eighth floor. The bottom seven floors had collapsed. She miraculously got stuck on an overhanging eaves. An 18-year-old boy jumped out of bed due to the explosion. As it is, he went on the run. He reached the street when everything collapsed behind him. And there’s that child prodigy who tried to flee the family home only to find that the building’s stairs were gone. Rescue workers found him huddled next to the elevator on Sunday morning. For the most epic, however, that other dark page emerges from the jaws of war with cell phones ringing beneath cubic yards of rubble and concrete dripping blood.
That Russia has resorted to this devastating missile to attack a city full of civilians and buildings that offer no resistance to such a huge volatile force can be explained for two reasons, according to experts. One of these is the shortage of higher precision ammunition, a fact that has affected the invading forces for months due to the impossibility of producing strategic weapons equipped with advanced technology with sufficient speed. According to Ukraine, the Russian military is throwing away some of the arsenal supplied by Iran, which the Tehran government denies, after all it finds available in its warehouses, sometimes causing it to use inappropriate ammunition for certain attacks. The X-22 is notable for the risk of deviating substantially from the chosen target. What could have happened this weekend.
The other possibility, however, is the desire to shock the enemy with a horrific carnage. It should not be forgotten that Dnipro has been the culmination of two days of artillery strikes in Donetsk, the intensity of which has few precedents. It also coincides with the capture of the strategic city of Soledar and the appointment of Valeri Guerásimov as head of the joint command leading the invasion. The attacks seem to show that the arrival of the chief of the Russian General Staff in planning the front will not turn the program of continuous bombing of their rivals into some kind of murderous Malaysian drop.
Based on the outskirts of Moscow, the aerospace company MKB Raduga has been commissioned to develop the KH-22, whose deadly inspiration dates back to World War II. At the end of this and other conflicts that shook the world, Soviet strategists realized the benefits of evolving from traditional naval combat to a theater of operations more consistent with the use of long-range projectiles and modified aircraft such as fighter-bombers and antiships. .
Actually, it can be confirmed that this mud came from that mud. The current invasion of Ukraine does not cease to be a translation of those warmongering principles of the “distant” war. The infantry strategies, hand-to-hand combat and the armored car columns, present in the first months of occupation and the siege of Kiev, have been turned into an artillery duel with the two sides exchanging grenades. Moscow thus fulfills one of the precepts of hybrid warfare put forward by the Chief of the General Staff in his ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’: sow terror among civilians (bloodbaths such as Dnipo are an example of this perversion) and create the conditions for popular discontent leading to an uprising against the enemy government. A goal that Russia is trying by destroying energy infrastructure so that the Ukrainian people become discouraged or angry with Kiev that has suffered the rigors of cold and freezing this winter.
The KH-22 was built with the American aircraft carriers and their escort ships in mind. If it creates a ten-meter deep sinkhole in the ground, as early tests have shown, it won’t have much trouble sinking a ship. And what can it not do against a building of cement and brick?
However, it is scary because it is practically unstoppable. The Ukrainian General Staff acknowledged this weekend that its anti-aircraft defenses are unwilling to intercept this type of missile, at least not until the United States and its NATO partners provide them with Patriot PAC-3 or SAMP-T missiles. The shipment of a shipment of Patriot batteries has already been approved by the White House.
To explain this ease of flight, one must pay attention to the functional mechanism of the ‘carrier killer’. Pure evil. The warhead reaches between 12,000 and 27,000 meters in altitude, depending on the conditions in which it is fired. Once it reaches the ceiling, it falls under its own weight and follows an elliptical arc in a dizzying descent. When it hits its target, the energy of the trap is added to the detonation of nearly a thousand kilograms of explosives. In the case of the Dnipro tragedy, it can be calculated that the rocket hit the building at just over 5,000 kilometers per hour.
This carnage is surprising because the Kremlin carefully selects where to use its KH-22s. In fact, since the start of the invasion, it has used them only 120 times and generally to destroy major energy facilities. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat believes that what happened in the residential complex is an “act of terrorism against civilians” in the use of such destructive munitions “in a densely populated city”. Ihnat has called on the international community to condemn Russia’s decision to use the KH-22 and urged Western allies to send anti-aircraft batteries capable of stopping this threat to Kiev as soon as possible. Moscow already has the KH-32 on its way, an evolution of the ‘aircraft carrier killer’ that climbs to an altitude of 40 kilometers. Impersonal disregard for life can go on forever.
Source: La Verdad
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