Ukraine has a new 600-mile cruise missile, the Long Neptune, and has fired it at Russia.
“We have significant results,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Saturday. “Long Neptune has been tested and successfully used in combat. A new Ukrainian missile, an accurate strike. The range is a thousand kilometers.” That’s 620 miles.
The Long Neptune is a longer version of Ukraine’s 17-foot-long Neptune anti-ship cruise missile—the truck-launched weapon that sank the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva in April 2022.
Long Neptune, which is longer and holds more fuel than the 120-mile standard Neptune, has been in development for years. When Zelensky pledged recently that Ukraine would produce 100,000 long-range munitions in 2025, he was partly referring to the Long Neptune—as well as to a host of far-flying explosive drones, the most impressive of which can travel more than 1,000 miles to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Deep strikes
The successful deployment of Long Neptune Zelensky referred to was apparently the March 14 strike on the oil refinery in Tuapse, in Russia around 300 miles from the front line in Ukraine. That Tuapse attack was just the latest in a chain of Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities that depressed production by around 10% last year.
Long Neptune is an important weapon. Striking harder than do-it-yourself attack drones, some of which are modified sport planes, the new missile helps free Ukraine from its partial dependency on the United States and Europe for its best deep-strike munitions. The U.S. under President Donald Trump is, at best, an unreliable ally. And Europe lacks the capacity to produce the large numbers of modern cruise missiles Ukraine needs.
Other made-in-Ukrainian munitions are coming, including air-launched glide bombs and ground-launched ballistic missiles. Even as Trump leans on Ukraine to accept a possible U.S.-brokered ceasefire that would favor Russia, Zelensky’s government is preparing for the war to grind on—and for attacks deep inside Russia to continue … if not escalate.