Iskander-M and KN-23: ballistic missile flight time to Kyiv, speed, specs

The Iskander-M is a Russian ballistic missile with a range of up to 500 km; the KN-23 is its North Korean counterpart. They fly an arc tens of kilometres high at more than 2 km per second. From the Bryansk border area to Kyiv that is about 1.6 min, which is why a ballistic alert often sounds only minutes before the explosions — and sometimes together with them.

A police bomb-disposal officer in a helmet examines twisted missile wreckage on snow in a residential courtyard — A police bomb-disposal officer next to the wreckage of an Iskander-M that did not explode in Kyiv on 24 January 2026. Photo: National Police of Ukraine, CC BY 4.0.

How long a ballistic missile takes to reach Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odesa and Lviv

Bryansk Oblast (border area) → Kyiv · 217 km 1.6 min at 8,000 km/h

The times below are for a straight line from the launch area to the city centre, at the speed the map uses for ballistic missiles (8,000 km/h). They are close to the estimate of Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov: a ballistic missile takes 2–4 minutes to reach Kyiv ^[3]. Beyond 550 km (the range of the newest 9M723-2) no time is shown.

Ballistic missile flight time from launch areas to cities (straight line)
Launch area	Kyiv	Kharkiv	Dnipro	Odesa	Lviv
Bryansk Oblast (border area)	1.6 min 217 km	2.9 min 382 km	3.5 min 465 km	—	—
Kursk	3.2 min 420 km	1.4 min 193 km	2.8 min 372 km	—	—
Belgorod	3.2 min 429 km	0.5 min 72 km	2.0 min 262 km	—	—
Voronezh	—	2.1 min 279 km	3.5 min 463 km	—	—
Taganrog	—	2.7 min 364 km	2.4 min 318 km	—	—
Crimea (Chauda)	—	—	2.9 min 390 km	3.2 min 430 km	—

The map shows a ballistic missile once a monitoring channel reports the launch, and counts the time from its current position. With ballistic missiles, do not wait for the marker — take shelter as soon as the alert sounds.

Why the ballistic alert comes late

A ballistic launch is seen first by partners' satellites; the data passes through a chain, and any delay in it eats into an already short time. A satellite may see a launcher getting ready but cannot know whether it will fire — so there are alerts without missiles too ^[3]. When a missile reaches Kyiv in 2–4 minutes, the alert can sound almost together with the explosions: during the daytime strike on Kyiv on 24 July 2026 the sirens went off at about 11:20 and the explosions followed within minutes ^[17].

Where Iskanders are launched from in 2026

2 June 2026: Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov oblasts and Crimea ^[12].
27 August 2026: Bryansk and Kursk oblasts ^[13].
7 October 2026: Bryansk and Voronezh oblasts ^[14].

According to monitoring channels (not official), Russia has set up at least nine launch sites near the border — including in Kursk Oblast, Taganrog, Millerovo and Crimea ^[15].

Iskander-M speed

On the Alarm Maps map 8 000 km/h
Claimed after boost (2,100 m/s) 7 560 km/h
Near the target, per Defence Intelligence (1,300–1,400 m/s) 4 680–5 040 km/h
Peak at the start of the terminal phase, per Defence Intelligence (2,600 m/s) 9 360 km/h

After its boost phase the Iskander-M flies at about 2,100 m/s — the maker's figure, not a measured one ^[2]. It is a solid-fuel missile on a quasi-ballistic path that can manoeuvre at up to 30g ^[1].

Why the Iskander is hard to shoot down

Only Patriot or SAMP/T can down a ballistic missile, and interceptors are scarce. In July 2026 air defence downed 29 of 195 ballistic missiles — about 15%; the Ministry of Defence blamed an acute shortage of interceptors ^[6]. In September, 8 Iskander-M and KN-23 missiles were shot down ^[7]. By RUSI's count, by the end of October 2025 227 of 939 Iskanders and Kinzhals had been shot down — about a quarter ^[8].

The missile keeps being upgraded: according to Ihnat, the Iskander manoeuvres in flight and releases radar decoys on approach, making it harder for Patriot to compute the intercept point ^[4]. In summer 2026 Kyiv was hit for the first time by the new 9M723-2, with a bigger motor and a range of up to 550 km ^[5].

How many Iskanders Russia makes

According to Defence Intelligence, in June 2026 — 55–60 missiles a month, up to 700 a year ^[9]; in July the estimate was lowered to ~50 a month with over 100 in stock ^[10]. One missile costs $2.3–3 million — figures from procurement documents ^[11]. The record for Kyiv came on the night of 19 July 2026: over 35 ballistic missiles (Iskander-M / S-400 and Zircons), damaging Lukianivska metro station ^[16].

An emergency worker guides a piece of missile wreckage lifted by a crane next to a demining truck — Emergency workers remove a piece of an Iskander-M in Kyiv after the attack on 24 September 2026. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine, CC BY 4.0.

KN-23 — North Korea's Iskander

The KN-23 (Hwasong-11) is a North Korean quasi-ballistic missile Russia has used since the end of 2023. Its warhead is about 500 kg and its range, by estimates, 690–900 km ^[18]. Early KN-23s missed by hundreds of metres or more; Defence Intelligence spoke of improved accuracy, but on 30 July 2026 one of the two missiles fired at Kryvyi Rih district missed by about 15 km ^[19] ^[20]. As of April 2026, Defence Intelligence estimated Russia had up to 50 KN-23s left ^[21]. On the map the KN-23 is the same "Ballistic" type.

S-300 and S-400 against cities

Russia also fires S-300 and S-400 air-defence missiles at ground targets, most often at Kharkiv: from Belgorod Oblast they reach the city in tens of seconds — 40, according to Kharkiv's mayor ^[22]. The Air Force reports them as "Iskander-M/S-400" on one line. The Iskander-K, by contrast, is not ballistic but a cruise missile that flies low, like the Kalibr or the Kh-101.

Iskander-M specifications

Type	short-range ballistic missile, solid-fuel, single-stage ^[1]
Other names	9M723, NATO SS-26 Stone; in the channels, "ballistic" or "fast target"
Speed	~2,100 m/s after boost (maker's claim) ^[2]; per Defence Intelligence — 2,100 m/s at the end of the boost phase, up to 2,600 m/s at the start of the terminal phase, 1,300–1,400 m/s near the target ^[26]
Range	up to 500 km; the new 9M723-2 up to 550 km ^[1] ^[5]; per Defence Intelligence — 390 km, 550 for the 9M723-2 ^[26]
Warhead	480–700 kg: high-explosive, cluster, penetrating, thermobaric ^[1]; per Defence Intelligence — 450 kg: cluster, fragmentation, high-explosive, penetrating or nuclear ^[26]
Manoeuvring	up to 30g; radar decoys on approach ^[1] ^[4]
Price	$2.3–3 million (procurement documents) ^[11]
Production	~50–60 a month (Defence Intelligence, 2026) ^[9] ^[10]
Size and weight	length 7,185 mm, diameter 920 mm, launch weight 3,800 kg ^[26]
Ceiling	up to 100 km; ballistic, quasi-ballistic or depressed trajectory ^[26]
Accuracy	CEP 20–30 m ^[26]
Guidance per Defence Intelligence	9B918 active radar seeker, 9E436 optical correlation seeker, Kometa satellite navigation, 9Kh820 solid-fuel engine ^[26]
Launch tempo	first missile within 4 min from high readiness or 16 min from the march, then up to 1 min between launches; flight task computed in up to 10 s ^[26]

The speed profile from Defence Intelligence shows why the Iskander is so hard to intercept: 2,100 m/s at the end of the boost, up to 2,600 m/s as the descent begins and 1,300–1,400 m/s near the target — the same 4,700–5,000 km/h the Kinzhal makes on approach, since it is essentially the same missile. It holds 177 components from seven countries: chips by Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Intel (Altera), STMicroelectronics, Micron, Panasonic and Xilinx (AMD), Macronix and ISSI memory — next to a Russian VM2 2502 processor made in January 2025 ^[26].

What a ballistic missile looks like on the map

A purple marker is "Ballistic" (Iskander-M, KN-23, S-300/S-400). Next to it is the number of minutes to arrival. Open the map · all threat types · Kinzhal · Zircon

Sources

Our figure — the 8,000 km/h the map uses for a ballistic missile's time to arrival — comes from the Alarm Maps map; how we compute it is described on the Sources page.

Updated 12 October 2026.