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By Isabel van Brugen
News Reporter
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A Russian cruise missile that was shot down over Kyiv on Thursday was reportedly equipped with a mock nuclear warhead.
Of the two Russian cruise missiles that were downed over Ukraine's capital, one was an X-55 cruise missile that had a block "screwed" on which acted as a simulator of a nuclear warhead, Ukrainian news outlet Defense Express reported.
Russia pummeled Ukraine on Thursday with a wave of missile strikes on cities including Kyiv, Dnipro, and the Odesa and Kharkiv oblasts. That came two days after Russian forces launched a barrage of some 90 missiles in what marked the largest attack on Ukraine since the war began in February.
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"According to preliminary information, two cruise missiles have been shot down over Kyiv," the city's military administration said in a post on Telegram Thursday. Iranian Shahed drones were also shot down over the city.
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Ukrainian authorities have said the attacks, like the previous mass strikes, seek to destroy the country's energy system and critical infrastructure.
Defense Express, citing unnamed sources, said that Russian forces took at least one X-55 from the country's nuclear arsenal, "unscrewed" the nuclear warhead from this missile and replaced it with an empty "block" that was fired over Ukraine.
The outlet notes that the X-55 is a Soviet missile that was originally developed specifically as a carrier of nuclear weapons and that conventional and nuclear warheads differ structurally.
Russia may have done so because its cruise missile inventory is running critically low, according to Defense Express. The Kremlin could also be deliberately attempting to overload Ukraine's air defense systems, the publication said.
Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the claims and has reached out to Russia's defense ministry for comment.
Last month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov suggested that Russia's missile stockpile was dwindling.
Defeating Russian President Vladimir Putin's military is "inevitable," he said, as he posted an illustration on Twitter showing that, as of October 12, Russia had 609 missiles left out of the 1,844 missiles it had when it first invaded Ukraine on February 24.
The remaining weapons as of last month, according to Ukraine's assessments, included 124 ground-launched missiles out of an initial 900 and 272 Kalibr missiles, which are launched by sea, out of an initial 500. There were also 213 air-launched cruise missiles (Kh-101-Kh555) still remaining from the 444 that Moscow initially had at the beginning of the war.
"Demilitarization of russia," Reznikov wrote. "By using hundreds of high-precision missiles against civilian objects of Ukraine, the aggressor state reduces its ability to strike the military targets."
He added: "Two conclusions: - russia's military defeat is inevitable; - russia is a terrorist state."
Meanwhile, three United States officials told CNN on Thursday that there is concern that U.S. stockpiles won't be able to meet Ukrainian demands going into the winter.
Ukraine has been receiving military assistance from the West to fight against Russian forces. The Washington-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) have been widely credited with turning the tide of the war.
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