Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday’s large-scale strike on Russia involved several weapons, including a “Pelican” for the first time. In a post on X on Sunday morning, Zelenskyy wrote that long-range attacks on Moscow’s region had a “very significant impact”. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine.
The systems used included FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichen and Pelican,” he said. The attack on the final day of voting in Russia’s parliamentary elections killed at least three people. Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 1,600 drones were intercepted, 450 of them heading for the capital.
However, the use of the Pelican has interested military analysts about whether it is a tactical ballistic missile or a drone. Speaking at the 34th International Defence Industry Exhibition in Poland last week, the CEO of Ukrainian defence firm Fire Point said Ukraine could start deploying its FP-7 tactical ballistic missile to target Russia in weeks, reported The Kyiv Post. Iryna Terekh explained that the new weapons could strike targets 200km (125 miles) away and carry a warhead weighing up to 150kg.
The FP-7 system is ground-launched and has a maximum projectile speed of 1,500 metres per second. Fire Point founder and chief designer Denys Shtilerman told Ukrainian media back in March that the system is cheaper than the US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy also said last month that they expected to use their first domestically produced ballistic missile as early as in the autumn.
So far, there is no official confirmation that the FP-7 tactical ballistic missile is the Pelican, but Ukrainian media, such as The Kyiv Post, has linked the two together. The New Voice of Ukraine reported on Sunday that Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that also produces the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, had earlier this year applied to register the Pelican trademark. However, the RBC-Ukraine news agency, citing unnamed sources, reported on Sunday without elaborating that the Pelican was an aircraft-type drone.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the Ukrainian media reports. In February, Ukraine’s defence ministry said that the domestic weapons industry had demonstrated “unprecedented growth”, with production capacity increasing 50-fold to $50bn. On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that the military counterintelligence unit at the Security Service of Ukraine has developed a new interceptor drone that had been “successfully deployed” against Iranian-made Shahed drones used by Russia throughout the war to target Ukraine.
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