Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missile program is struggling, facing persistent difficulties with its new Sarmat missile. And it’s not that the country cuts off the experience that once depended on putting war on its neighbor.

“Historically, a lot of the ICBM manufacturing plants and personnel were based in Ukraine,” Timothy Wright, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Business Insider.

Ukraine became independent when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but its defense industry continued to be intertwined with Russia’s. Ukraine has expertise in nuclear and missile technology, as well as manufacturing knowledge.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has evolved ACBM with capable forged combustion. But with Sarmat, to use a fed formula through the liquid.

The problem with that “is that the Russians haven’t done this in about 30-plus years,” Wright said. “They haven’t got any recent experience doing this sort of stuff with land-based ICBMs.”

Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert at the Oslo Nuclear Project, told BI that it was “a bit of a question of ‘Have they retained the expertise?’ because all the people who built their previous missile have retired or are dead.”

“Some of them are in Ukraine, which had a big part in the Russian ICBM program,” he said. “So that’s a major issue.”

Wright described Russia’s choice to use liquid-fuel technology as “a really weird choice that they made” because it was “something the Ukrainians previously did for them.” He said that was “one of the reasons why they’re having lots of problems.”

The company that designed and maintained it, Pivdenmash, known as Yuzhmash in Russia, was in what is now modern-day Ukraine. (Russia appeared to target the Pivdenmash plant in an attack with a new missile type in November.)

Russia wanted to develop more of this kind of expertise and capability itself. “After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia found itself in a position where essentially it was having to rely on external countries to maintain its existing forces and also then contribute to the development of other ones,” Wright said.

In March 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region, claiming it as part of Russia despite international outcry, and ignited conflict in Ukraine’s east that continued until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In response to Russia’s actions in Crimea, “the Ukrainians pretty much terminated all contracts around the maintenance of ICBMs at that point — so that’s where the big cutoff happens,” Wright said.

The collapse in cooperation between Ukraine and Russia “accelerated” Russia’s efforts to replace the R-36 so it wouldn’t rely on Ukraine as much, Maxim Starchak, an expert on Russian nuclear policy and weaponry, wrote in a 2023 analysis.

“All cooperation with Ukrainian contractors ceased,” and the responsibility for maintaining the R-36s went to Russia’s Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, Starchak said, adding: “But this was a stopgap solution. Launches ceased, with missiles and warheads simply undergoing annual checks.”

Ukraine banned military cooperation with Russia and stopped supplying Russia with any military components in June 2014. That left Russia without much of the expertise it wanted for Sarmat.

The Russian Army Mavens had predicted that the withdrawal of the cooperation of Ukraine with Russia would give absolutely in the Ukrainian defense industry. And it has suffered, this industry is now blooming, with local defense corporations and western giant brands that all paintings in the country react to Russia’s invasion.

Russia still has many missiles that are hitting Ukraine and pose a big threat to Europe, and it has recently ramped up its missile production. But Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine appear to have continued to harm its missile program. Roscosmos, a Russian space agency that also makes missiles, said last year that canceled international contracts had cost it almost $2.1 billion.

Many countries have put sanctions on Russia in reaction to the invasion, and the military’s sustained effort is also hampering Russia’s economy. Hoffmann described Russia as “really limited means” to solve its missile problems.

ICBM Sarmat ICBM of Russia seemed to have suffered a catastrophic failure a September test, which seems to have exploded. The satellite photographs have shown a great crater around the launch of the Cosmodrome of Plesetsk, an area in the northwest of Russia.

That apparent failure followed what missile experts said were multiple other problems. The powerful missile’s ejection tests and its flight testing have both been repeatedly delayed, and it previously had at least two canceled flight tests and at least one other flight test failure, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

Russia has poured a lot of money and propaganda into the Sarmat missiles. President Vladimir Putin in 2018 bragged that “missile defense systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless” and that “no other country has developed anything like this.”

But it doesn’t work right. With the setbacks facing the Sarmat and no other replacement, the R-36 keeps having its life extended. Wright said the missile was “already really, really past its service life.” And sooner or later, things are going to fall apart.

Hoffmann said the Sarmat fight “is clear evidence of the fact that whatever the experience in Russia at the moment, it is sufficient to end this program in a passable manner. “

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