Inside Ukraine’s quest to build a missile to strike deep in Russian territory

Longer than a city bus and weighing nearly 7 tons, the Flamingo is at the center of Ukraine’s quest to build missiles domestically that can strike deep inside Russian territory. Doing so successfully would lessen the country’s reliance on its Western backers for its most powerful weapons.

On a recent afternoon, engineers were testing the Flamingo’s adjustable flaps and securing a small booster rocket to the missile, which would soon be fired from a secret launch site in Ukraine toward targets inside Russia. Fire Point, the company that makes the missile, gave The Wall Street Journal rare access to one of its secretive facilities last month.

Fire Point already has developed Ukraine’s FP-1 drone. With a range of up to 870 miles, the drone has become the workhorse of Kyiv’s campaign to hobble Russia’s oil industry. Ukraine has carried out more than 100 strikes on Russian energy facilities since August, causing billions of dollars in damage and, at one point, knocking out as much as one-fifth of Russia’s oil-refining capacity.

The problem is that Russia can often quickly patch up refineries hit by the drones’ 230-pound warhead—sometimes in less than a week. To cause real damage, Ukraine needs something that packs a much bigger punch. Fire Point believes the Flamingo, with a 2,500-pound warhead, is the solution.

The large fuel tank of the Flamingo—officially called the FP-5 missile—allows it to travel more than 1,800 miles, according to Fire Point. That would be much farther than the reach of Ukraine’s existing arsenal of Western-made missiles, such as the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems or the Storm Shadows supplied by the U.K. The Flamingo’s range would be comparable to Russia’s Kalibr and Kh-101, which have slammed into cities throughout Ukraine.

While defense experts say the Flamingo holds promise for Ukraine’s military, they say the missile hasn’t yet proven it can achieve the ranges it is designed to reach. They argue that the missile’s size and weight slow it down and make it easier to spot and intercept.

Fire Point said there have been fewer than 100 launches since inception, but it is learning from each one and continually improving the missile’s design. Because Flamingo was designed on a budget, it lacks many of the sophisticated stealth elements or complex visual guidance systems installed on Western missiles. Fire Point is seeking to acquire these for the Flamingo.

It has been forced to cut costs wherever possible. Fire Point engineers tested various flight controllers when building the missile, up to models costing $500,000, but settled on an open-source version that is freely available online. The jet-powered engines are sourced from old Soviet aircraft. They were taken out of service and, in some cases, kept in storage across Ukraine for decades before Fire Point located them. Iryna Terekh, the company’s 33-year-old technical director, compares their reliability to that of the Kalashnikov, a trusty rifle lauded for its ruggedness and simplicity.

“Our strategy is to economize on the less important stuff but never save money on the stuff that really matters," said Terekh, who used to run a company manufacturing furniture for Ukraine’s middle class. “I’d love to make something that looks beautiful and leaves you short of breath, but I understand that this is not what our times call for."

Terekh’s partner at Fire Point is Denys Shtilerman, a burly entrepreneur from Odesa who founded the defense company in November 2022, nine months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He started the company after growing frustrated with the cost of drones he was buying for the Ukrainian military through a charity he ran.

Shtilerman graduated from Moscow’s top physics institute in 1991 and later worked for Russia’s Defense Ministry, where he developed automatic guidance systems to help coordinate different branches of its armed forces. He has since cut all ties with Russia, which he said stripped him of citizenship in 2016.

Fire Point began with 18 employees and was focused on making long-range drones that are cheap and reliable. It now has more than 2,000 people working at more than 40 facilities across Ukraine, Shtilerman said, and is valued at more than $1 billion. The company is also working to develop a ballistic missile and Ukraine’s analog to Russia’s S-400 air-defense system to protect the country’s skies.

Its rate of expansion has made the company a target for Russia, which has twice struck its facilities. To ensure continuity of operations in the event of an attack, each of Fire Point’s factories has at least one exact copy, Shtilerman said, with the same equipment on standby in case a key link in the production chain is destroyed.

This reporter and a photographer were blindfolded and driven for about 45 minutes before being taken into one facility doing work on the Flamingo. Enormous machines wrapped layers of carbon around 40-foot-long cylinders, producing carbon tubes that can encase burning rocket fuel. The cylinders were then transferred to industrial dryers, where they rotated like rotisserie chickens.

Garage-sized ovens heated molds of the Flamingo’s carbon wings. Missiles at various stages of completion dotted the factory floor. On one wall was a poster showing a Flamingo bird embracing an ace of spades—a reference to President Trump’s statement in February that Ukrainians “don’t have the cards."

Terekh, the technical director, said parts of the giant facility are made of concrete 5 feet deep to withstand the force generated by the equipment. The company doesn’t reveal its rate of output but says it plans to increase production capacity to seven Flamingos a day. Every missile is produced to order for the Ukrainian armed forces, Terekh said, and is fired within two days of completion.

Fire Point has sought to tap all existing knowledge inside Ukraine. Terekh pores over Soviet missile construction manuals that are freely accessible online. She said she has read three dozen of them. One of Fire Point’s consultants is a 92-year-old who was involved in the Soviet missile program.

For Terekh, the challenge of perfecting the Flamingo hinges on amassing enough firepower to take out a Russian refinery while ensuring enough precision and stealth to reach it. And doing all this while protecting the company’s facilities from Russian attacks.

“It’s like repairing a car that is traveling at 130 miles per hour, while being shot at," she said. “Ukrainians are developing the ability to do that."

The prototypes of the FP-5 missile were painted in various colors to make their debris easier to locate after test launches. When one of the prototypes was made pink, a worker coined a nickname that stuck: Flamingo.

Ukraine’s first declared use of the Flamingo was in August, against a Russian naval base in Crimea. Of the three missiles launched, only one directly struck the target, said Fabian Hoffmann, an expert on nuclear weapons and missile technology at the University of Oslo, citing satellite imagery. Fire Point disputed that characterization.

Even though the Flamingo is still a work in progress, Hoffmann said the advent of a homegrown defense industry in Ukraine capable of producing long-range weapons is already a major development. Its challenge in 2026 will be to pick its winner—identify its most successful homegrown long-range weapon and sharply scale up its production, he said.

“They cannot guarantee those hits, but what they can guarantee is that there is a threat to those targets, and that threat alone does something to your adversary," he said. A powerful long-range missile that is difficult to intercept would reduce a key Russian advantage in the war: its vast territory. “You take away the Russian sanctuary of its homeland," Hoffmann said.

Fire Point is now receiving funding from several Western countries, including the U.K. and Germany, and is in the process of building a new factory in Denmark to produce rocket propellant. In November, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined Fire Point’s advisory board.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said Fire Point is among several Ukrainian defense contractors it is investigating as part of a probe into corruption. The company hasn’t been charged and denies wrongdoing.

Fire Point’s goal is to achieve self-sufficiency, ensuring that every component of its weapons is made inside Ukraine. For Terekh, it is part of a broader mission to build a defense sector that is able to stand on its own.

“As a country we can’t, and probably never will, achieve a parity of resources with Russia," she said. “What’s important is not the amount of resources you have, but how you use them."

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com