Oryol Strike: Ukraine Hits Plant Making Iskander-M Parts

Ukraine’s armed forces have struck the Proton-Elektroteks defence electronics plant in the Russian city of Oryol, around 160 kilometres from the border, in a missile attack on the evening of October 23. The General Staff in Kiev stated the following day that the plant’s main production building had been damaged, while Oryol Governor Andrey Klychkov reported that an enterprise in the city’s Soviet district had been hit at rush hour, killing three people. The independent Russian outlet ASTRA and the Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ both identified the site as the Proton plant. The strike extends a campaign against Russian airfields and refineries to the component suppliers behind Russia’s missile arsenal, with the General Staff stating: “This complicates the production of components for cruise and ballistic missiles, with which the enemy hits Ukrainian cities.”

The General Staff described the plant as running a full manufacturing cycle for optoelectronic equipment and power semiconductor devices, from raw crystals to finished modules. It stated that Proton supplies modules for the S-71 Kover air-launched cruise missile and inverter switches for the 9M723 missiles of the Iskander-M system, as well as electrical components for the Pantsir-S1 air defence system and its later variants. Ukrainian monitoring channels claimed that footage of the attack showed British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, while local sources suggested the Ukrainian-built FP-5 Flamingo, and Kiev has not identified the weapon used. The Storm Shadow weighs around 1,300 kilograms with a 450 kilogram penetrating warhead, and its export variant has a range widely reported at over 250 kilometres, comfortably placing Oryol within reach of aircraft launching from Ukrainian airspace.

The attack was far from the first on the Oryol region, with ASTRA having reported on December 26, 2024 that three Storm Shadow missiles hit a facility there which the General Staff described as a storage and repair site for Shahed attack drones. The same General Staff dispatch reported strikes overnight into October 24 on the Tolyattikauchuk chemical complex in the Samara region, whose synthetic rubbers it described as a raw material for solid rocket propellant, and on an aircraft at Yeysk airfield. These follow a Ukrainian Navy claim on October 15 that Neptune missiles had hit six Su-34M bombers at Borisoglebsk airfield, which Russia has not confirmed.

Ukraine’s interest in the Iskander-M supply chain reflects the difficulty of intercepting the missile itself, with Kiev having reported in mid-October that no Russian ballistic missiles were shot down during one overnight attack. The 9M723 flies a manoeuvring quasi-ballistic trajectory to ranges of up to around 500 kilometres, relying on power electronics such as the inverter switches the General Staff says the Oryol plant supplies. Klychkov, whose statements carried by Russian state media outlet TASS put the number of injured at eight, dismissed social media reports of dozens of casualties and chemical contamination as the work of “enemy propaganda.”