Inside Ukraine’s quest to build a missile to strike deep in Russian territory

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Inside a sprawling, brightly lit factory in central Ukraine, a pair of launchers held up two massive cruise missiles with an unusual nickname: “the Flamingo." Longer than a city bus and weighing nearly 7 tons, the Flamingo is at the center of Ukraine’s quest to build missiles domestically that can strike deep inside Russian territory. Doing so successfully would lessen the country’s reliance on its Western backers for its most powerful weapons.

On a recent afternoon, engineers were testing the Flamingo’s adjustable flaps and securing a small booster rocket to the missile, which would soon be fired from a secret launch site in Ukraine toward targets inside Russia. Fire Point, the company that makes the missile, gave The Wall Street Journal rare access to one of its secretive facilities last month. Fire Point already has developed Ukraine’s FP-1 drone.

With a range of up to 870 miles, the drone has become the workhorse of Kyiv’s campaign to hobble Russia’s oil industry. Ukraine has carried out more than 100 strikes on Russian energy facilities since August, causing billions of dollars in damage and, at one point, knocking out as much as one-fifth of Russia’s oil-refining capacity. The problem is that Russia can often quickly patch up refineries hit by the drones’ 230-pound warhead—sometimes in less than a week.

To cause real damage, Ukraine needs something that packs a much bigger punch. Fire Point believes the Flamingo, with a 2,500-pound warhead, is the solution. The large fuel tank of the Flamingo—officially called the FP-5 missile—allows it to travel more than 1,800 miles, according to Fire Point.