EXPLAINER: Kyiv targets the Iskander before its first flight, in Voronezh rubber

A diode

Ulyanovsk, the night of September 25

It all comes down to one tiny component.

Not a missile. Not a launcher. A diode.

It lets current through in one direction only. That’s all it does.

A part you can hold between two fingers, the kind you drop and then hunt for on your hands and knees across the floor.

The Iskra plant in Ulyanovsk makes them for the Pantsir-S1, UNITED24 writes: diodes for the TVK-2 television channels of the 72V6 combat vehicle.

On the night of September 25, 2026, Ukrainian drones struck that plant. Ukraine’s General Staff claimed the strike the same day.

One part for the Pantsir, which guards the Russian sky. One part for the Kh-59M2, an air-launched guided missile: Iskra supplies pairs of transistors to the Yaroslavl radio plant, according to the same outlet.

At the end of the wire, a window

In the bulletins, a missile is counted in launches. Before it exists, it is counted in parts.

That is the unit Kyiv has just chosen.

At the end of the chain, there is always a body. A window that rattles before impact. A hallway where people sit on the floor, backs to the wall, waiting for the noise to stop.

Between the diode and the hallway, there is a whole missile. And a supply chain nobody sees.

A missile always starts with a worthless little part.

Three addresses

What the General Staff claims

On September 25, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posts a short message. Three plants. Three cities.

The first, Iskra, belongs to the Almaz-Antey conglomerate. The General Staff describes it as a maker of semiconductors and components for Russia’s defence industry.

Its customers, according to the same message: manufacturers of radio-electronic equipment, measuring instruments, communications gear and special equipment.

It adds that the plant takes part, as a subcontractor, in producing Kh-59M2/M2A missiles and the 72V6 vehicle of the Pantsir-S system.

The second is the synthetic rubber plant in Yefremov, in the Tula region.

The third is Voronezhsintezkauchuk, near Voronezh.

The last two, the General Staff says, take part in producing solid rocket propellant, including for the ballistic missiles of the Iskander system.

And a promise of more

The message invokes Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and the inherent right of self-defence. It says the aim is to reduce Russia’s military-economic potential.

It ends with a promise: more is coming.

Ukrinform and Interfax-Ukraine picked it up in the afternoon. Same source, same list.

Read it again. No launcher, no air base, no ammunition depot. Nothing that fires. Everything that comes before.

The choice of targets is already an argument.

Three plants, and not a single launcher.

Tires and a Pantsir

What the Voronezh plant makes

Despite the tires, roads and roofs that come out of its workshops, Voronezhsintezkauchuk now sits on Kyiv’s Iskander list.

Militarnyi, a Ukrainian defence outlet, describes the plant bluntly. It belongs to the petrochemical group SIBUR.

It’s a plant for butadiene and styrene-butadiene rubbers. It’s a plant for thermoplastic elastomers, the kind that go into tires, pavement and roofing. It’s a plant of about 1,500 employees, according to the 2023 figure.

Its annual capacity, again according to Militarnyi: 226,000 tonnes of rubber and 135,000 tonnes of SBS polymers.

A big site. A city around it.

SIBUR was also building an n-butyllithium unit there.

On paper, it’s a civilian site. On Kyiv’s map, it’s a link in the chain.

Under two kilometres away

In the same profile, a detail: a Pantsir system is stationed less than two kilometres from the plant.

A tire plant. A Pantsir next door.

The detail proves nothing. An air defence battery can cover a whole city, its bridges, its neighbourhoods, its power plants.

It only suggests that this corner of Voronezh matters to Russian air defence. And the Pantsir family, according to Ukraine’s General Staff, counts Iskra among its suppliers.

A tire plant, guarded like an arsenal.

The binder

What rubber does

Here is the mechanism, without jargon.

On September 12, Ukrainian forces struck Togliattikauchuk, in the Samara region. Reporting on that strike, Militarnyi noted one use: synthetic rubber serves as a polymer binder in making composite solid propellant.

A binder is what holds everything else together.

That isn’t a metaphor. It’s chemistry.

That’s why a tire plant can turn up in a military message.

It’s also why the claim is hard to verify. The same rubber can end up on a wheel rim or in a missile motor, and the vat doesn’t say which.

What can’t be shot down in flight

I read this strike as an interception.

Not one by air defence batteries. One aimed at the calendar.

A ballistic missile in flight leaves little time. A missile still waiting for its propellant leaves more.

A missile can be intercepted at the factory, too.

That is the reading Kyiv offers. It is also the one that best explains why three plants come before three launchers.

The sky is defended in workshops too.

Yefremov, again

December 24, 2025

Yefremov isn’t a new name.

On December 24, 2025, Ukraine’s General Staff had already claimed a strike on the same plant, Ukrinform reported that day.

It described the plant as a producer of components for plastic explosives and solid rocket fuel. Explosions and a large-scale fire, according to the same bulletin.

Nine months later, the same address is back in a General Staff message.

Two strikes. One name. Nine months apart.

A plant targeted twice was, in all likelihood, running between the two strikes. The December strike went after a plant. The September strike goes after a supply chain.

Tula, missing from the lists

And yet on this September 25, Tula is nowhere to be found.

Meduza lists the territories attacked according to Russian authorities: Ulyanovsk, Voronezh, Rostov, the Perm region, and the occupied Luhansk region. Mezha draws up a similar list. Neither mentions the Tula region.

No governor quoted. No toll.

Silence.

Who is counting, in Yefremov?

Named by Kyiv, missing from Russian lists.

What Kyiv hasn’t shown

A belligerent’s word

Here is the strong objection. It comes from a Ukrainian outlet.

Militarnyi describes Voronezhsintezkauchuk as a producer of rubber and SBS polymers. Not a word about propellant.

Kyiv says the plant makes it. Kyiv says it’s for the Iskander. Kyiv says the strike falls under Article 51.

Three claims. No attachment. No document. No contract. No order.

A belligerent establishes what it says, not the fact. The rule applies to Moscow every morning. It applies to Kyiv this morning.

The binder and the series

Two facts weigh the other way.

The first is chemical: synthetic rubber does serve as a binder for composite propellant.

The second is a series. Yefremov in December. Togliatti on September 12. Yefremov and Voronezh on the 25th.

A series isn’t proof. It’s a method.

So the line shifts one notch, and I’ll write it down: the link between those vats and the Iskander rests, on this September 25, on Kyiv’s word.

A method isn’t proof. It has an address.

Thirteen in Voronezh

What the governor counts

On September 25, the governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, posts two messages roughly two hours apart.

The governor counts 88 drones destroyed over Voronezh and at least six districts. The governor first counts four injured. The governor then counts 13 injured, including a six-year-old child treated on the spot.

A woman born in 1963 and a man born in 2001 are in intensive care, according to him.

He describes pockmarked facades, blown-out windows, damaged cars. A few non-residential and industrial buildings were hit by debris, sometimes starting a fire.

During the night, he had asked residents not to post photos or videos of air defence at work. Especially not with the location.

A toll, yes. A picture, no.

These are a belligerent’s numbers. I write them as such. I don’t discard them.

A six-year-old

A six-year-old child is on no target list.

And yet there he is, in the second message, between two lines about facades.

In Ulyanovsk, Governor Alexei Russkikh counts eight injured, including a child in moderately serious condition, TASS reports.

Here is what I owe this piece in fairness: the dual-use line runs through the middle of cities. A rubber plant has neighbours. Windows. Beds.

The glass that crunches underfoot the next morning knows nothing of Article 51.

The governor counts the injured. He doesn’t name the plant.

The dual-use line has windows in it.

Launched from the Voronezh region

September 12, in Odesa

Now, a date.

On September 12, Ukraine’s air force describes a combined attack, reported by the Kyiv Post and by Ukrinform.

On September 12, Iskander-M or KN-23 ballistic missiles take off from the Voronezh and Rostov regions, and from occupied Crimea.

That day, six Kh-59/69 missiles, eight Kalibrs and 129 attack drones come with them.

That day, in Odesa, fire takes hold from the 21st to the 23rd floor of a 25-storey apartment building.

That day, the head of the regional administration, Oleh Kiper, counts 35 injured, including a five-month-old baby.

Rescuers evacuate seven people from the building, two of them children. Others free residents trapped in an elevator.

In Chornomorsk, five civilians are injured, four of them children.

At 8:30 a.m., the column of downed targets lists six Kalibrs, one Banderol, two Kh-59/69s and 101 drones.

No Iskander.

Thirty-five injured. A baby. A building burning from the top down.

Thirteen days later

Thirteen days.

Thirteen days later, Kyiv targets a Voronezh plant it links to Iskander propellant.

I’m not writing that the missiles of the 12th came out of that vat. Nobody can write that.

Four Kh-59/69s are also missing from the column of downed targets. Did they carry a pair of transistors from Ulyanovsk? Nobody will say.

The worthless little part from the start may have flown over Odesa that night.

What the sky didn’t stop, Kyiv hunts on the ground.

The same night, 295

What Ukraine took

A strike is never read alone.

On the night of September 25, starting at 6 p.m. the previous evening, the Russian army launched 295 attack drones at Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s General Staff. Of those, 52 were jet-powered.

Shaheds, Gerberas, Banderols, decoys. Launched from Oryol, Kursk, Millerovo, Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Shatalovo, occupied Donetsk and Crimea.

267 shot down or neutralized by 7:30 a.m. Hits on 16 sites. Debris on four others.

The same message said the attack was still going on.

That same morning, the General Staff opened its bulletin on the 1,675th day of the full-scale armed aggression. The day before, according to that bulletin, the Russian army had used 8,359 kamikaze drones and dropped 296 guided bombs.

One day. One war. The same bulletin, tomorrow.

Aggressor and victim

The same night, then, two skies.

And yet those two skies are not equivalent.

One army sends drones at the cities of a country it invaded. That country targets, on the invader’s soil, the plants it links to what falls on it. And it claims the strikes, with names.

The aggression has an author, the Kremlin. The response has an address, and it gives it.

Two skies on the same night, one aggressor.

One conglomerate, two uses

Almaz-Antey

That leaves Iskra’s owner.

The Almaz-Antey conglomerate is an aerospace defence group, according to the Ukrainian General Staff’s message.

Militarnyi adds a fact that changes the reading: other subsidiaries of the group are building up Russian drone production, with a new site in Izhevsk making Shahed-type aircraft.

The same group guards the Russian sky. Through another subsidiary, it makes what fills Ukraine’s.

Two uses. One conglomerate.

A supplier of suppliers

Here is what the Ulyanovsk strike really means.

Iskra doesn’t assemble missiles. It supplies those who do.

Semiconductors, microwave components, power electronics, UNITED24 lists.

Hitting there means hitting everything that depends on it, without knowing exactly what.

That’s the strength of the method. It’s also its blind spot.

Hitting a supplier means aiming at several chains at once.

The law and the proof

What Article 51 covers

The General Staff doesn’t just claim. It qualifies.

It invokes Article 51 of the UN Charter and the inherent right of self-defence. The same day, in another message, the same article covered other targets.

The law invoked says why to strike. It doesn’t say what to strike.

The what is the real question.

One vat, two fates

A rubber plant can serve a tractor tire or a missile motor. The vat is the same. The difference lies elsewhere: in the contracts, the orders, the rail cars pulling out.

Kyiv asserts the link. It shows no contract, no order, no rail car.

Is that a weakness? In wartime, showing what you know about a plant often means losing the source that told you.

It’s also what leaves the line exposed.

A court would ask for an exhibit. A war doesn’t wait for the court.

Without proof, the law remains an intention.

The law says why. Only proof says where.

Working up the chain

Togliatti, Yefremov, Voronezh

Line the dates up end to end.

December 24, 2025, Yefremov. September 12, Togliattikauchuk: three workshops hit, BK-2, BK-3 and BK-4, and production suspended for a time, according to Militarnyi. September 25, Yefremov again, and Voronezh.

Togliatti produces butyl rubber. Militarnyi points to its use in tires for wheeled military vehicles.

December. September. September again.

This is no longer an isolated strike. It’s a supply chain being traced back, workshop by workshop.

From launcher to binder

A launcher hides, moves, gets replaced.

A plant doesn’t move. It has an address, smokestacks, work shifts.

And yet a plant can be repaired. Yefremov shows it: targeted in December, targeted again in September.

So the method has a price for Kyiv. It has to come back, again and again, to the same map.

Kyiv no longer hunts only the launcher. It goes after the binder.

What we still don’t know

Hit isn’t halted

Governor Russkikh acknowledged damage to industrial and civilian infrastructure, UNITED24 and Militarnyi report.

Which infrastructure, he didn’t say.

A governor who admits damage without saying where isn’t necessarily lying. He is sorting.

A plant that is hit isn’t a plant that is stopped. A workshop on fire isn’t a severed chain.

Iskra has existed since 1971, UNITED24 notes. It also makes medical products and ceramic packages.

What nobody quantifies

How many weeks of propellant does one strike take away from the Iskander?

I’ll admit it: that’s what worries me most. We judge these strikes by their flames, and flames keep no books.

Neither Kyiv nor Moscow publishes that number. A fire can be filmed. A production rate can’t.

If Yefremov restarts before winter, then…

A flame isn’t a damage report.

Tires or missiles

The missing piece

Back to the diode.

On its own, it harms nobody. It fits between two fingers.

Fitted into a Pantsir, one Ulyanovsk part guards a sky. Fitted into a Kh-59M2, another crosses one.

Kyiv now counts missiles in parts. In diodes, in transistors, in tonnes of rubber.

The missing piece, on this September 25, is public proof.

The line left to you

Where do you draw the line between a tire plant and a missile workshop, when the only public evidence is the word of the side doing the striking?

On September 12, no Iskander was among the downed targets. On the 25th, Kyiv aimed further upstream.

I know which way I lean. I also know what I don’t know.

The answer will show up, or not, in the air force’s next bulletins.

Before its first flight, the Iskander gets intercepted in rubber.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — strikes on Iskra, Yefremov and Voronezhsintezkauchuk, September 25, 2026
• Governor Alexander Gusev — injuries and overnight drones in Voronezh, September 25, 2026
• TASS — eight injured in the Ulyanovsk region, per the governor, September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• UNITED24 Media — the Iskra plant and its parts for the Kh-59 and Pantsir, September 25, 2026
• Militarnyi — what Voronezhsintezkauchuk makes, September 25, 2026
• Kyiv Post — strike on Odesa and Iskanders fired from the Voronezh region, September 12, 2026