Ukrainian officials find nuclear warhead dummy inside missile shot down over Kyiv

A Russian missile downed over Kyiv was originally intended to carry a nuclear payload, according to Ukrainian officials quoted by local media.

Instead, a nuclear warhead dummy was installed on the Kh-55 rocket, which was shot down on Thursday, the Strategic Communications Centre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine told the Ukraine-based Defence Express outlet.

“Simply put – for this strike, the orcs took at least one Kh-55 missile from their ‘nuclear arsenal’, ‘unscrewed’ the nuclear warhead and replaced it with a dummy before firing it at Ukraine,” it said.

“Although we should not rule it out that as events develop, at least a few such missiles will be seen.”

The discovery, which followed an examination of missile debris, raises questions, science and technology publication technology.org said.

It wrote: “There is a chance that the Russian federation is running out of conventional missiles of Kh-555 modification and they are using Kh-55 instead.

“If a nuclear charge was taken out, does this mean Russian soldiers forgot to put a conventional warhead in its place?

“Or, if a nuclear warhead was taken out, where is it now?”

There is also a chance the missile with a dummy existed in its current form and was simply used as a somewhat cheaper decoy with the aim of misguiding Ukrainian air defence systems, said Ukrinform, a Ukrainian news agency.

Four missiles and five Shahed drones were destroyed during an air raid alert over Kyiv on Thursday, Ukrinform reported.