Russia’s Colonel General Viktor Bondarev claimed “not a single bombing raid missed the target”. The only way Russia could have hit 100% of their targets would be if their target was the ground.

Throughout the campaign, Russia’s own Ministry of Defence footage shows bombers releasing non-guided munitions in stark contrast to the Western forces which exclusively use guided munitions to minimise collateral damage.

In October last year, Russian strikes killed at least 13 people after hitting a field hospital in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The strike took place on the town of Sarmin in the northwestern province of Idlib on 20 October. The group have also claimed that Russia’s air strikes in Syria have so far killed 370 people, one third of them civilians, since it started.

Additionally, a Russian cruise missile of a type used in Syria hit a remote village in the north of Russia after going off course during a test flight, the defence ministry said it caused no damage when it fell near the town of Nyonoksa on the White Sea coast in the Arkhangelsk region. Nyonoksa is by the White Sea, 40km west of Severodvinsk, a test range is near the village.

In October, four Russian cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea fell short of their targets in Syria and crash landed in a rural part of Iran.

It was been widely reported that at least four missiles crashed as they flew over Iran. It’s unclear where in Iran the missiles landed, Russian ships have been positioned in the south Caspian Sea, meaning the likely flight path for missiles into Syria would cross over both Iran and Iraq.

Russian claimed “not a single bombing raid missed the target”. The only way Russia could have hit 100% of their targets would be if their target was the ground.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

19 COMMENTS

    • UK Defence Journal They did what they was tasked to do, give Assad momentum, turned the fortune of war over to Assad, and they did, and they did it very good, why wast bombs on IS when the coalition bombed them? The coalition flew 70 000 sorties against IS, Russia 10 000 against targets of high strategic value, and we all know the resault of it.,

  1. They did a great job in killing thousands of civilians and destroying neighbourhoods, not a great achievement and considering they hardly attacked ISIS in fact they helped them

  2. Okay about this article,

    1. A Cruise missile did not land in Iran because the Iranian government denied it. It looks mighty suspicious an anonymous U.S. official said this, infact some have even said several landed in Iran. They cant even keep track of the lies they’re making up.
    I quote “Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency also said the Iranian defence ministry had rejected the reports, claiming they were part of the west’s “psychological warfare”.”

    2. The Russian’s have done a damn sight more than the united states has and more so the UK have and you’re a fucking idiot to deny that, from the first to the fourth of February they hit over 900 targets alone.

    3. You fail to realise, when you talk about civilian death tolls (even though western forces have killed their own fair share of civilians and blown up a hospital, but you wouldn’t report that would you. That Russia does not care, at all. It is not a nation that will pussy foot around in the sand waiting for the all clear to flatten an entire block of houses just to kill a few Jihadi’s, because they know that the longer they wait the less effective it is to put and end to them. I mean this is what happens when you arm moderate rebels to overthrow a government you don’t like and then they turn into extremists, you end up inviting another country into the fight that gives absolutely zero fuck’s about the consequences and warnings from western countries for doing so because they’re defending the very government the US tried to make collapse to establish a democracy.

    4. As for the General’s claims, he is probably narrowly wrong, because it doesn’t matter how precise they are to the Russians, to them it matters how much they drop for one target to make sure they’re gone altogether so there is nothing left.

    And Finally, stop making Russia out to be your god-damn scapegoat and enemy, they are not a threat and never will be unless we keep provoking them with EU and NATO expansion. Christ, get a grip.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/doctors-without-borders-airstrike-hits-afghan-hospital-killing-3-staffers/2015/10/03/2ed13104-b50a-48ec-9eb9-92db8ee3a876_story.html

  3. Everyone except Simon in the very first point seems to be missing the point. The claim in the article is that “Not a single bombing RAID missed the target”. Admittedly I’m still sceptical but I can imagine very close to 100% success. Want to blow up a building? Drop 100 bombs to carpet bomb the area. OK, 99 bombs missed the building completely but one got close enough to cause some damage to the building, maybe it even hit it and destroyed it completely. In any event, even that 1 out of 100 near miss that knocked down a bit of the wall could still be claimed by the Russians to be enough for that raid to have hit the target.

  4. Yes, the claim is clearly fictitious, a bit like Putin’s approval ratings.

    However their accuracy HAS been higher than many would have thought, myself included.
    The level of technology (navally) employed successfully has been a bit of an eye opener to NATO.

    And Putin’s use of close air support in favour of Assad’s ground forces has been effective.
    If it weren’t for the Ukraine thing, it might be good to thaw this new cold war we have found ourselves in.

    I don’t think wild success claims help their cause.

    I understand the actually figures (certainly re the cruise missiles via Iran) are still favourable.

    And compared to what they could do, they have been restrained :S ( ish )
    Most importantly they have done their share brokering this peace.

    All the above really really pains me.

    I’m defiantly NOT painting Putin as the “good guy”. I don’t feel I can paint NATO that way either though. Fighting by proxy via Islamic extremist, isn’t our finest hour.

    UK Forces and the RAF in particular have been exemplary however !

    Beno

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