This Tuesday, Russia bombed three cities in Ukraine, leaving eight civilians dead and more than 70 injured. It would be another attack by the invaders' air forces if it were not for the number of missiles used – 41 in total – and the tactics used: a combination of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles fired from five provinces in the same operation. Different Russians.
Since the summer, the Russian army has amassed a huge arsenal of drone bombs and missiles, which it is now using in new ways to punish the Ukrainian rearguard. The result was shown this Tuesday: the Ukrainian air force shot down 21 of the 41 missiles fired that were aimed at Kiev. Half of Russian projectiles were intercepted, below the nearly 80% effectiveness achieved on average in 2023. On January 8, something similar happened: Russia fired 59 projectiles, including missiles and Shahed bomb drones, with an interception rate of 40%.
The city that suffered the worst this Tuesday was Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers from the Russian border, where seven people living in apartment buildings died and another 50 were injured. The number of injured in Kiev has risen to 22 civilians due to the impact of the intercepted rockets. Another woman died in Pavlograd, a key logistics hub in Dnipropetrovsk province on the Donetsk front.
The intruder fired missiles from the ground and launched bomber aircraft from five different regions of Russia. In contrast to the usual tactics of recent months, in which the rockets arrived in distributed waves, the attack took place almost simultaneously, as Mikhail Shamanov, spokesman for the military administration of Kiev province, explained in state news. The Russian enemy initially fired its Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea. When they flew over the target's airspace after half past six in the morning, Iskander ballistic missiles were fired from the nearest Russian provinces of Belgorod and Voronezh. According to Shamanov, the Iskanders, which can fly above the speed of sound, entered the airspace of the Ukrainian capital when anti-aircraft defenses attacked cruise missiles. At that moment, the EL PAÍS journalist could hear the concentrated roar of several explosions coming from different locations in Kiev in a short period of time.
The anti-aircraft shield of the capital, Ukraine's most protected city, made it possible to stop the almost simultaneous attack, but this was not the case in Kharkiv. Its proximity to Russian territory makes it more vulnerable, and this time not only were the usual S-300 and S-400 missiles fired from neighboring Belgorod, the main damage was also caused by the Iskander and Kh-22 cruiser weapons. fired by bombers in the Russian provinces of Bryansk and Oryol.
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Alarm in Poland
The first warning signal of Russia's new bombing strategy occurred on December 29th. That day, 122 rockets hit Ukrainian cities, but 70% were shot down. The aggression came from different regions of Russia, albeit in different waves, and one Russian missile even flew over 40 kilometers through the airspace of NATO member Poland. This attack on Ukraine left 39 people dead and more than 160 injured. Polish warplanes took off in combat mode this morning due to the possibility of a repeat of this invasion of their airspace, the Polish Armed Forces reported.
Additionally, in recent months, Russia has bombed the same target with Shahed drones in swarms of dozens of units arriving from different directions, complicating coordination of anti-aircraft machine guns.
One of the goals of the Russian bombing raids in recent weeks is to destroy the defending country's anti-aircraft munitions. The Ukrainian Air Force warned as early as the 8th that the effectiveness of its defense was at risk due to a shortage of American Patriot missiles. Patriot missile batteries are Ukraine's main anti-aircraft system, followed by the German Iris-t or the Norwegian Nasams. The Republican Party's White House block on sending a new U.S. military aid package to Kiev is stretching the resources with which Ukrainian forces can fight. Its troops have moved into defensive positions along virtually the entire war front and even suffered a slow retreat along the borders of Donetsk and Kharkiv provinces.
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