GUR Drones attacked Russian Over-the-Horizon Radar

April 18, 2024October 21, 2025

Sparse reports appeared online stating that Armed Forces of Ukraine drones — of unknown type — reached Mordovia, where they attacked the Russian over-the-horizon radar 29B6 “Container”. This is a massive stationary installation with a forest of antennas that had a very long history of design, construction, and testing. The saga began back in 1995, when not Pootin but “democrat” Yeltsin ruled the federation. Under his leadership, an order was issued to launch creation of an expensive system aimed against the West. In general, design, construction, setup, testing, and other activities only finished in 2019, when “Container” entered combat duty.

Here we should note that the concept embedded in this radar’s design is based on using wavelengths unavailable to mobile radars. This station can detect approaching ballistic missiles at distances exceeding 6,000 kilometers. It’s also capable of tracking missiles and satellites in near space. The station likely cannot guide any weapons systems toward these missiles. However, information obtained through it should go to weapon systems that will already be informed about the number of targets, the direction they’re coming from, altitude and speed. This helps standard systems guide appropriate weapons, having time to do so thanks to the long-range target detection.

The blind spot everyone ignores

Whether the concept itself makes sense is another question — as is how engineers actually built the station. Yet this short technical description of the “product” misses one crucial point that experts openly discuss but which, for obvious reasons, never appears in official documents. The entire complex focuses on long-range detection, and because of that design choice, it leaves a “dead zone” covering nearly 900 kilometres around it.

In other words, aerial targets inside roughly 1,000 kilometres fall to other sensors. “Container” simply does not handle them. And by the way, precisely for this reason everything was built deep in the Orcs’* rear.

Geography and strategic reach

From the Container to the nearest NATO troop concentrations in the Baltic states lies roughly 1,000 kilometres; to Poland’s border it’s about 1,400 kilometres. Thus, for those western directions the station functions as designed: it detects well out to the middle of the Atlantic. Moscow once planned a twin installation in the Far East, but that project remains on paper. Still, the Container’s 6,000+-kilometre horizon makes clear whose targets this system primarily served — strategic assets across the ocean.

That is, even since the mid-90s, the enemy began preparing for renewed confrontation with the USA. This is relevant because the West’s strategic error was made not even by Obama, who rushed around with his “reset” with russia after his first attempt in Georgia, but much earlier. But now — this isn’t about that.

Why Ukraine attacked Russian Over-the-Horizon Radar?

All these details matter because they reveal what kind of threat this station actually poses to us. Since the front line lies only 600–700 kilometres away, most of our actions take place inside its dead zone. Therefore, the Container’s presence changes little in Ukraine’s daily tactical reality. Besides, our forces still don’t have the type of long-range strike weapons that the Container was supposed to spot. In short, the radar’s range almost never intersected with the systems we currently fire from the frontline.

Still, someone deliberately shut that object down. And we both know that no one risks operating deep behind enemy lines “just for fun.” Every high-precision drone, every long-range munition costs too much to waste on random targets. They fly only toward something vital.

Final assessment

From this follows the conclusion that the Armed Forces methodically cut out enemy infrastructure that doesn’t pose a direct threat to our means of destruction. However, it undoubtedly clears routes for missile flights that our military don’t have in their arsenal, but our partners do have. Obviously, they themselves cannot strike Russian territory. But the Armed Forces can do this easily and naturally, which they’ve already demonstrated more than once. In this case, we create opportunities for our partners and thereby pay back of the military aid they provide us.

The successful strike shows Ukraine’s GUR attacked the Russian over-the-horizon radar deep in Mordovia, demonstrating growing capability to hit strategic targets far behind enemy lines. More importantly, it reveals coordination with Western partners in systematically degrading russia’s air defense and early warning systems. Each such operation weakens the enemy’s ability to detect and respond to long-range threats — whether Ukrainian or potentially allied.

*Orcs – a common term for Russians who support or participate in the armed aggression against Ukraine.