Journalists of the Skhemy investigative project have found evidence that Russia has been shelling Ukraine with Kh-55 cruise missiles, which official Kyiv handed over to Moscow as part of an agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers and the Russian government in 1999 in exchange for repayment of debts for Russian gas, according to Radio Liberty.
The journalists secured the text of the agreement and a list of missile numbers and compared them with the numbers of the Kh-55s that the Russian army began to use against Ukraine during the full-scale invasion.
Skhemy found at least a dozen missiles from the list that Russia launched at Ukrainian cities - some of them were shot down by Ukrainian air defence forces, some hit residential buildings.
The journalists searched the archives for an agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers headed by Valeriy Pustovoytenko and the Russian government under Vladimir Putin, signed in Yalta in 1999. According to the agreement, Kyiv transferred eight Tu-160 and three Tu-95MS heavy bombers, as well as 575 Kh-55 cruise missiles to Moscow.
In return, Russia compensated Ukraine for its debt for Russian gas in the amount of 275m hryvnyas, which was the cost of the transferred equipment.
Along with the agreement, journalists secured a list with all the numbers of the transferred missiles and compared them with the numbers of the Kh-55 missiles that Russia used to fire at Ukraine after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. Three of these missiles, which were shot down by Ukraine's air defence in January, May and April 2023 in Kyiv and the region, are on the list of missiles transferred to Moscow in 1999.
Another Kh-55, which hit an apartment building in the Ukrainian capital in late 2022, killing a woman, was also transferred by Kyiv as part of the deal. Another missile, which Kyiv also handed over to Moscow, hit a house in Kyiv Region. A child was injured in the attack.
Several other missiles were identified by Skhemy using photographs with numbers on the wreckage obtained from law-enforcement sources.
Last December, Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russia was using Ukrainian Kh-55 cruise missiles, transferred under the Budapest Memorandum, in its large-scale-attacks.