This Tuesday, Russia bombed three cities in Ukraine, causing the death of 8 civilians and leaving more than 70 injured. It would be another attack by the invader’s air forces if it were not for the number of rockets used – a total of 41 – and the tactics it has followed: a combination of cruise and ballistic missiles fired in the same operation from five provinces. different Russians.
Since the summer, the Russian army has been accumulating a vast arsenal of drone bombs and missiles that it is now using with new methods to punish the Ukrainian rearguard. The result was demonstrated this Tuesday: the Ukrainian Air Forces have shot down 21 of the 41 rockets fired, which were aimed at kyiv. Half of the Russian projectiles have been intercepted, below the almost 80% effectiveness that was achieved on average in 2023. On January 8, something similar happened: Russia fired 59 projectiles, including missiles and Shahed bomb drones, with a 40% interception ratio.
The city that suffered the worst this Tuesday was Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers from the Russian border, where 7 people who lived in apartment buildings died and another 50 were injured. The injured in kyiv have risen to 22 civilians due to the fall of the intercepted missiles. In Pavlograd, an important logistic hub in the province of Dnipropetrovsk towards the Donetsk front, another woman lost her life.
The anti-aircraft shield of the capital, the most protected city in Ukraine, has allowed the almost simultaneous attack to be stopped, but this has not been the case in Kharkiv. Its proximity to Russian territory makes it more vulnerable, and this time it has not only received the usual S-300 and S-400 missiles fired from neighboring Belgorod, the main damage has been caused by the Iskander and the Kh-22 cruiser weapons. launched from bombers in the Russian provinces of Bryansk and Oryol.
Alert in Poland
The first warning sign of the new Russian bombing strategy occurred on December 29. 122 missiles arrived in Ukrainian cities that day, but 70% were shot down. The aggression occurred from different Russian regions, although in different waves, and a Russian missile even flew over 40 kilometers of the airspace of Poland, a NATO member country. 39 people died and more than 160 were injured in that attack on Ukraine. Polish fighters took off this morning in combat mode due to the possibility of a repeat of this invasion of their airspace, as reported by the Polish Armed Forces.
Also in recent months, Russia has bombed the same target with Shahed drones in swarms of dozens of units arriving from different directions, making it difficult to coordinate anti-aircraft machine guns.
One of the objectives of the Russian bombings in recent weeks is to deplete the defending country’s anti-aircraft ammunition. The Ukrainian Air Force already warned on the 8th that the effectiveness of its defenses is threatened because it has a deficit of American Patriot missiles. Patriot rocket batteries are the main anti-aircraft defense system that Ukraine has, followed by the German Iris-t or the Norwegian Nasams. The Republican Party’s blocking of the White House from sending a new US military aid package to kyiv is pushing the resources with which the Ukrainian Armed Forces can fight to the limit. Its troops have moved into defensive positions on practically the entire war front, even suffering a slow retreat on the lines of Donetsk and Kharkiv provinces.
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