Russians Press Putin on Air Defense after Reported Ukraine Cross-Border Salvo

Russian pro-war military bloggers are urging President Vladimir Putin to address his country's air defenses after a reported Ukrainian strike on the Belgorod region damaged damaged a prized anti-aircraft missile system last week.

Kyiv's forces destroyed parts of a Russian S-300/400 air defense system in the Russian region which borders Ukraine, likely using a U.S.-donated High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), the U.S.-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said in its latest analysis.

The strike came shortly after the Biden administration moved to allow Ukraine to use some weapons to strike certain targets inside Russia. Kyiv may use the weapons in Russian territory bordering northeast Ukraine for the purpose of defending its Kharkiv region, but the use of long-range missiles such as ATACMS is still prohibited on Russian soil, a U.S. official told Newsweek.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Defense Ministry for comment by email.

A post by Boris Rozhin, a Crimea-based Russian war blogger, was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by user Dmitri, from War Translated, an independent project that translates materials about the war.

"Russian occupier bloggers take extremely seriously the threat to Russian air defense systems from allied forces, including ATACMS ballistic missiles," he wrote.

"They say that a new approach to creating air defense systems is needed, completely different from what has been practiced for the last 25 years in the Russian military-industrial complex. They call for an urgent review of the strategy," the user added. "I think it's a little late, guys."

Rozhin said on Telegram that a revision of the "architecture" of Russia's air defense systems is "urgently needed."

"It is necessary to be able to separate control cabins, launchers and other machines of the complex several hundred meters from each other. Creation of anti-fragmentation screens and curtains for all elements of the air defense system and mandatory reservation of control cabins where the crews are located," he wrote.

"In general, a change in the appearance of air defense systems from bulky 'cubes' visible for kilometers to the most compact 'transformers' capable of camouflage on the ground."

The military blogger continued: "Even during the Vietnam War, our crews of the S-75 air defense system protected the control cabins from 'pineapples' - BLU-3 Pineapple cluster fragmentation bombs with bundles of bamboo, which both protected from fragments and at the same time camouflaged the stations."

"I highly recommend reading the memoirs of General Alexander Yakovlev, a military adviser to one of the S-75 regiments of the North Vietnamese army," he added. "Today we need to take the most urgent measures to compensate for the threat we face!"

The ISW said in its analysis on Monday that while Russian sources widely speculated that Ukrainian forces used U.S.-provided HIMARS in the strike, Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on the strike.

"Russian sources have increasingly claimed that Ukrainian forces are using HIMARS to strike Belgorod Oblast since the US partially lifted its restrictions on Ukraine's ability to use US-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russian border areas with Kharkiv Oblast," the think tank said.

"Russian sources will likely continue to characterize any successful strike in Belgorod Oblast as a HIMARS strike regardless of the system used," it added.

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