MOSCOW, Aug 1 — In the corridors of European defence ministries, the ballistic missile is once again the weapon that concentrates the mind. For the Russian Armed Forces, this is no novelty: launching ballistic missiles in anger is a habit that stretches back through the Soviet era, and the systems now being fired in the conflict with Ukraine are the heirs to that long and heavy tradition. The arsenal in question is not small.
As of 2022, Russia is estimated to hold approximately 1,000 ballistic missiles, with the bulk of them belonging to two families — the Iskander and the Topol. The former has a range of up to 500 kilometres.
The latter sits at the opposite end of the scale: with a reach of up to 10,000 kilometres, the Topol is a key component of Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
A Soviet Inheritance
The operational history of these systems predates the current war by decades. The Iskander, in particular, has seen combat before. During the 2008 war with Georgia, Russian forces employed the system in the fighting in the Caucasus.
That it has now appeared in the conflict with Ukraine is, against this backdrop, a further sign of how far the escalation has travelled — moving from a limited, punitive use in the South Caucasus to a central role in a major European conflict. The wider picture matters here.
Ballistic missiles are not artillery; they are fast, difficult to intercept, and their use carries political weight well beyond the blast radius. When a state commits such systems to a conflict, it signals that the threshold of restraint has been lowered. The appearance of these weapons in Ukraine represents a significant escalation, with the potential to draw in other countries as the war’s shockwaves spread outward.
Modernisation and the Road Ahead
Even as these missiles are expended in combat, the Russian military has been looking forward. There has been a sustained effort to modernise its ballistic missile systems, with the explicit goal of increasing their range and accuracy. That is a sobering thought for European planners.
A more precise Topol, or an Iskander that can reach further, changes the calculations of every defence review. The modernisation programme suggests that whatever happens on the battlefield, the Russian military regards long-range strike capability as a permanent investment.
What is at stake, then, is not merely the course of the current war, but the character of the European security order that will follow it. The use of ballistic missiles in Ukraine has already redrawn the lines of what is considered acceptable in interstate conflict; the continued refinement of those systems — more range, more accuracy — points towards a future in which European capitals must assume that no target is out of reach.
The next phase to watch is whether the modernisation of these systems accelerates under the pressures of wartime experience, and whether the employment of Iskander and Topol missiles in Ukraine becomes a template for future confrontations. For now, the facts are plain: a large arsenal, a long history of use, and a modernisation drive that shows no sign of losing momentum.
Against that backdrop, the rest of Europe is left to calculate what the range and accuracy of Russian ballistic missiles will look like by the time this conflict ends.
