US: Russia used Tochka missile in railway station strike

WASHINGTON: The United States believes Russia used a short range ballistic missile to strike a railway station in east Ukraine on Friday, a senior US defence official said.

The US defence official said the Pentagon believed Russian forces used an SS-21 Scarab missile in the strike, but that the motivation for the attack was not clear.

The SS-21 is the name used by the Nato military alliance for a type of missile known as the Tochka in former Soviet states.

The US was still analysing the strike and it was unclear whether cluster munitions were used.

“We are not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren’t responsible,” the official said.

The Russian Defence Ministry was quoted by RIA news agency as saying the missiles said to have struck the station were used only by Ukraine’s military and that Russia’s armed forces had no targets assigned in Kramatorsk on Friday.

Videos posted on social media in recent weeks, which Reuters could not independently verify, appeared to show Russian forces in or near Ukraine transporting Tochka missile launchers.

The US defence official said Russia’s combat power in Ukraine continued to decline and was somewhere between 80 per cent and 85 per cent of its preinvasion levels.

The US had estimated Russia assembling more than 150,000 troops around Ukraine before its invasion on Feb 24.

The official said the US now had indications Moscow had started mobilising some reservists and could be looking to recruit more than 60,000 personnel. Russian forces who had been in the Kyiv region were heading to Belarus and parts of western Russia, such as Belgorod, to be refitted and resupplied, the official said.

But the Pentagon believed Moscow had yet to solve the logistics problems that have hampered their invasion since its start, the official said.