Eight wounded in Odesa, including a child: The new Russian missile is cheap, and that is the worst news

Eight wounded, one of them a child, two hospitalised. A night attack on Odesa, damaged infrastructure and residential buildings, with a 24-storey block worst hit - from the seventeenth to the twenty-third floor. Windows in neighbouring buildings shattered in the blast wave.

The figures were released by Serhiy Lysak, head of Odesa's military administration. But what makes this night different from dozens before it is not the number of wounded - it is what the attack was carried out with.

According to Ukrainian reports, Russia used a combination of aerial bombs, ballistic missiles and Banderol cruise missiles - a weapon only introduced in 2025. It is a jet-powered missile with a medium range of around 500 kilometres, a speed of roughly 700 kilometres an hour and a warhead weighing between 114 and 150 kilograms.

Cheap missile, expensive effect

It is precisely that combination that worries military analysts. The Banderol has capabilities typical of expensive cruise missiles but costs considerably less - which means it can be fired in large numbers. Ukrainian estimates say these missiles already account for around 80 percent of Russian strikes on Odesa's infrastructure.

That is a figure that says more about the future than about last night. When a state finds a way to produce precision weapons at a price that lets it spend them without counting, defence stops being a question of technology and becomes a question of arithmetic. Every interceptor costs more than the target it brings down. That is an equation the side under attack loses over time, even while winning every individual night.

Odesa is not a random target. It is the main port through which Ukraine exports grain - the same grain that ends up in mills across North Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe. Every damaged port installation there is felt a long way from the Black Sea, and that is not rhetoric but logistics.

The question left unanswered tonight is simpler and harder: what does a state do when its opponent produces missiles faster than it can produce air defence systems? Until now the answer was "it waits for help from outside". Does that answer still hold?