According to a Washington Post report, the Ukrainian military is also using dummy weapons in its defense against the Russian invaders in order to deceive the attackers. It is about wooden replicas of modern US missile systems, the newspaper wrote on Tuesday, citing unnamed high-ranking officials from the US and Ukraine. In this way, the Russian armed forces were tricked into wasting expensive Kalibr cruise missiles on harmless replicas. The paper was also able to examine photos of these decoy targets, it said.

Russian drones, which transmitted the location of the putative missile systems to the Black Sea fleet, could not distinguish the dummies from real artillery batteries. "When the drones see the battery, it's like a VIP target," the newspaper quoted a Ukrainian official as saying. After a few weeks, these "dummies" would have misled at least ten Kalibr missiles. In view of the success, the production of the replicas has been expanded.

According to the Washington Post, the replicas could also be a reason why the number of supposedly destroyed Western weapon systems in Russian reports is so high, especially with regard to the US missile launcher Himar. "They claimed to have hit more Himars than we actually delivered," the paper quoted a US diplomat as saying.

Washington Post report