Russia's missile shortage myth persists despite attacks

Russia running out of missiles: the mantra surviving every mass attack

Tired of hearing that Russia is running out of missiles? It’s understandable: this claim has been repeated since 2022 with the regularity of a weather forecast. British intelligence, cited by various media between November 2022 and January 2023, asserted that the Kremlin was depleting its precision arsenal. Weeks later, Moscow launched "the largest missile attack Ukraine has ever faced." This pattern has occurred 101 times, according to recurring estimates in conflict analyses.

Figures that don't match the narrative

The United Kingdom, through its intelligence services, repeatedly placed Russia on the brink of armament collapse. Specifically, in November 2022, it was reported that Moscow barely had the capacity to maintain a high launch rate. However, evidence on the ground showed otherwise: waves of Geran-2 drones (the Russian version of Iranian Shahed) and Kh-101 missiles struck Ukrainian infrastructure at a pace that disproved scarcity. A recurring data point in the debate: "They ran out of missiles 100 times, and 101 times they launched the biggest attack." The contradiction is too systematic to be ignored.

The ingenuity of 'washing machines' and subsonic blades

One of the most discussed elements is Russia's adaptation to sanctions: the serial production of low-cost drones, ironically dubbed "Russian washing machines" due to their crude appearance and abundance. Information has also circulated about the use of decoys—empty missiles or "subsonic blades"—to saturate Ukrainian air defenses. War engineering has demonstrated that, even if high-precision missiles are scarce, the Russian industry can replace them with more rudimentary but equally effective technology for attrition.

Self-sufficiency versus Western dependence

A structural argument repeated in analysis is Russia's ability to manufacture its own missiles, unlike Ukraine, which depends on aid from over 40 countries. Russia possesses raw materials and factories it can reactivate; Ukraine does not. The question of who will run out of ammunition first has no clear answer, but the industrial balance seems to tilt toward Russia in the long term, provided it maintains component supply via parallel channels.

But here lies the final irony: every time it is announced that Russia is running out of missiles, Ukrainians count impacts again. And British intelligence, from which headlines drink, has been wrong so many times on this point that its credibility borders on myth. Someone should tell London that if there are no missiles, perhaps it should stop counting them.