The Vremya program aired a short story under the heading “In Kyiv, the NATO Secretary General was shown his own weapons under the guise of Russian weapons.” It says :
“Personnel from Kyiv. The NATO Secretary General is there now. Promises Ukraine membership in the Alliance. Not now, someday, “with time”. We are not interested in what Stoltenberg says, but in what is shown to him. The obligatory program is the inspection of broken equipment, as they say in Ukraine, “occupiers”.
Pay attention to this – the wreckage of a tactical missile, which is passed off as Russian. But here's the problem. Kramatorsk, shelling of the station, a year ago. Also debris. It has been proven that the missile is Ukrainian. The same "Tochka-U", we have long been decommissioned. Donetsk, March last year. Here is Mariupol, our correspondent shows the wreckage of several more “Points”. The characteristic rudders in the tail section are clearly visible – our modern Iskanders do not have such.
Let's return to today's footage from Kyiv. All distinguishing features are in place: four rudder mounts in the tail, folding wings closer to the central part of the body. The Ukrainian government, in a blue eye, demonstrates to the NATO Secretary General under the guise of Russian – their own weapons, which fired at civilians in Donbass, Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions. Stoltenberg, an economist by diploma, does not notice such details, and it is clear that in Kyiv he is not behind this at all.
But on February 15, 2022, the Zvezda TV channel of the Russian Ministry of Defensereleased a report about the very “long-discontinued” Tochka-U. It was called “Destructive Force: Footage of Rocket Launches from the Tochka-U Complex at the Allied Resolve Exercise” was published, and it said:
“Despite the already very solid period of use, Tochka-U tactical missile systems perform their tasks without fail, especially in combination with the latest weapons. In a group attack on a mock enemy, together with Tochka-U, Belarusian Polonaise multiple launch rocket systems took part. Unlike the Russian complex, they had training launches.”
On March 30, 2022, the Belarusian Gayun project published a video on Twitter showing a convoy of Russian vehicles with the letter V moving across Belarusian territory near Gomel. The column includes at least 8 Tochka-U launchers.
On April 8, 2022, a Tochka-U missile hit the railway station in Kramatorsk, filled with civilians trying to evacuate from the combat area to the western regions of Ukraine. The strike killed 60 civilians, including 7 children. The Russian authorities, just like the Vremya program now, denied the use of Tochka-U and tried to blame Ukraine for the attack on the city it controlled. Bellingcat investigator Michael Sheldon wrote at the time:
“The Russian authorities blamed Ukraine for the strike, saying that the Russian army does not use Tochka-U missiles. Pro-Russian media also cited claims regarding the missile's serial number and its intended direction of flight.
The Bellingcat team and others in the open source research community have matched these claims with publicly available footage in an attempt to determine the origin of the Tochka-U missile that claimed dozens of lives on April 8 at the Kramatorsk railway station.
At the time of this writing, the available evidence from open sources is not enough to establish all the details about the strike, including the direction of the missile's arrival. However, this evidence seems to refute one of the arguments that the Russian authorities are making in their defense, namely that the Russian army allegedly does not use Tochka-U missile systems.
Photographs and videos on social media, as well as Russian news reports from 2021, show Tochka-U launchers in service with Russian forces, and February 2022 satellite images of a base in southern Russia appear to show military equipment, external the type and dimensions of which correspond to the mentioned launchers. Experts spoken to by the Bellingcat team also say that although Russia has reportedly been decommissioning Tochki-U in recent years, this does not render Russia's stockpiles unusable or unusable. At the same time, Amnesty International stated that Russia used the Tochka-U missile in Donetsk on February 24, 2022.”
In a report published in February 2023 by Human Rights Watch and SITU Research “Death at the train station. Russian strike on Kramatorsk with cluster munitions" says :
“Since it was put into service in 1989, the Tochka missile system has occupied a prominent place in the Russian, and earlier in the military arsenal of the Soviet Union. The system was also used and is currently being used by Ukrainian forces. The Russian military has long planned to replace the aging system and in 2019 announced the completion of the re-equipment of all missile brigades that previously used Tochka missiles with the 9K720 Iskander ballistic missile system. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian officials have repeatedly stated, including in letters to the UN Security Council on March 15 and to the General Assembly on April 8, that their armed forces do not use Tochka missiles.
Despite this, various sources have covered Russia's use of the missile system since February 24, 2022. In July 2022, former Russian military and pro-government commentator < Igor Girkin (Strelkov). — The Insider > criticized the Russian military for not covering the Tochka-U launchers near Luhansk, which were reportedly destroyed by Ukrainian forces. In January 2022 , Jane's Strategic Weapons Yearbook reported that both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces are armed with the Tochka missile system. Various independent investigators have also documented the presence of Russian Tochka-U ballistic missiles in and near Ukraine by reviewing photos and videos posted on social media.
HRW has also identified several locations where, since February 24, 2022, Russian forces appear to have deployed Tochka missile systems in Ukraine. In the village of Kunye, 22km north of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, HRW found ample evidence that Tochka missiles were close to the site used by Russian forces during the 8 April attack. The railway station of Kramatorsk is within the 120-kilometer range of the Tochka-U missile. Russian troops occupied the area for about half a year, from early March to early September.
HRW has analyzed very high resolution satellite imagery taken on April 15, 2022, showing several large rectangular containers on a concrete slab outside a facility used by Russian forces near Kunye. The shape, dimensions and color of the containers correspond to the transport containers 9Ya234 for Tochka missiles. At least 12 of these shipping containers are also visible in the satellite image taken on September 6th.”