Ukraine has conducted a test on new domestically made missiles and is ramping up missile production, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.
Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app that he had received reports from his military on the test.
“We can thank our Ukrainian missile developers. We are speeding up the production,” he said, without providing further details.
Zelenskyy said in August that Ukraine had conducted its first test of a domestically-produced ballistic missile.
Ukraine, locked in a 33-months-long war against a much bigger and militarily better-equipped Russia, is ramping up domestic production in an attempt to speed up weapons supplies and decrease its dependency on Western aid deliveries.
Zelenskyy’s remarks come in the wake of Russia’s recent test of an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile armed with conventional warheads. The missile targeted what Russia claimed was a missile facility in the Dnipro region of Ukraine.
Casualties were negligible and Russia said the facility was completely destroyed. It was intended as a warning to Ukraine and its Nato allies after Kyiv fired US supplied long range ATACMS missiles into Russia.
The ATACMS or American Tactical Missile System is a supersonic missile made by Lockheed Martin with a maximum range of 300 km. It’s guidance package homes in on the target through GPS and it carries a 226 kg blast fragmentation warhead.
Earlier Ukraine had used Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK. These are conventionally armed missiles that have a range of 250 km. Reports say Ukraine may have used up to 12 of these missiles last month against a command headquarters on Russian soil
Zelenskyy’s claim suggests he intends to step up the fight against Russia with everything his developers and engineers can come up with. But it’s not clear if he has the funding and the capacity to do so.
 With Reuters inputs
