Ukrainian defense reporter Illia Ponomarenko said in a Twitter account post early on Monday that Russian Armed Forces used Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems to attack a civilian airport near Zhytomyr, in central Ukraine.
The Iskander (NATO: SS-26 “Stone”) is a Russian road-mobile short-range ballistic missile with a range of up to 500 km. The Iskander has several different conventional warheads, including a cluster munitions warhead, a fuel-air explosive enhanced-blast warhead, a high explosive-fragmentation warhead, an earth penetrator for bunker busting and an electromagnetic pulse device for anti-radar missions. The missile can also carry nuclear warheads.
Twitter post states: “The airstrikes were conducted from Belarus, using Russian ballistic missile launchers.”
Zhytomyr airport in central Ukraine has been targeted by a missile fired from Belarusian territory, Ponomarenko reports.
🇷🇺 Video of a #Russian missile strike on the Zhytomyr airport, presumably by an Iskander-M missile.#Russia #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/zoCPowsKhD
— SUNA (@SunaUnique) February 27, 2022
At the same time, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that it has pledged not to allow its territory to be used by Russia for attacks on Ukraine.
Numerous videos from social media confirm this and showed the launches of Russian missiles from the territory of Belarus near the town of Mozyr.
С территории Беларуси, из под Мозыря продолжают пуски ракет ОТРК “Искандер” по территории Украины.
Крайний пуск зафиксирован в 23:06. pic.twitter.com/L0G89aiFRI
— Александр Коваленко (@zloy_odessit) February 27, 2022