DailyExpertNews
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Russia flooded Kyiv, Lviv and other major cities in Ukraine on Thursday morning with an unprecedented array of missiles, according to officials, stepping up its assault on the entire country as a sluggish ground war continues in the east.
A total of 81 missiles were used in a “massive attack” on Ukrainian infrastructure, including six Kinzhal ballistic missiles capable of evading Kiev air defenses, the Ukrainian military said.
“The attack is really large-scale and for the first time with such different types of missiles. We see that as many as six Kinzhal were used this time. This is an attack like I can’t remember seeing before,” Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, told Ukrainian television on Thursday.
“So far we have no capabilities to counter these weapons,” he added, referring to the Kinzhals, plus six X-22 air-launched cruise missiles also launched by Russian forces.
“It has been a difficult night,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
“The enemy fired 81 missiles in an attempt to intimidate the Ukrainians again, returning them to their wretched tactics. The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They will not shirk responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelensky said.
He listed 10 regions in Ukraine where airstrikes took place, including Dnipro, Odessa, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, saying the attacks hit “critical infrastructure and residential buildings”.
“Unfortunately there are injuries and deaths. My condolences to the families,” he added.
Russia used the nuclear-capable Kinzhal missile, which it has described as a hypersonic weapon, a few times in the early weeks of its invasion last year. But the powerful weapon, which Ukraine cannot shoot down, has rarely been seen over the country’s skies.
According to preliminary information from regional authorities, at least 11 people were killed and more than 20 injured during the night attacks.
In Kiev, an air raid alert lasted nearly 7 hours on Thursday night and power cuts were carried out as a preventive measure, regionally authorities said. A fire broke out in the Zolochiv community near Lviv when the fragments of a Russian missile were shot down, regional authorities said.
The fire destroyed three residential buildings and three cars. The debris was cleared and rescuers searched for more victims on Thursday morning. Elsewhere in Ukraine, several infrastructure facilities and other buildings were affected.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Thursday the barrage of missile strikes it launched was in retaliation for what the ministry called “terrorist actions” staged by Kiev in Russia’s Bryansk region last week.
“In response to the terrorist actions in the Bryansk region organized by the Kiev regime on March 2 this year, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a massive retaliatory strike,” it said in a statement.
“High-precision airborne, naval and land-based long-range weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, are hitting key elements of Ukraine’s military infrastructure, military-industrial complex enterprises, as well as energy facilities that serve them,” the ministry said. .
Russian security officials claimed that a small Ukrainian armed group crossed the Russian border into the southern Bryansk region last week. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said the agency was conducting operations “tracking armed Ukrainian nationalists who violated the state border”. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the incident as a “terrorist attack”. A local official said two civilians were killed.
DailyExpertNews cannot independently verify the Russian claims and local media has no footage of the alleged incidents, any sort of confrontation or any alleged raid reported by Russian authorities.
The Russian pretext for Thursday’s attacks was rejected by the Kiev defense ministry, which compared the Kremlin’s claims of “retaliation” to propaganda tactics used by the Nazi regime to promote the use of flying V-1 bombs over London during to justify World War II. “Brothers in spirit,” the ministry said, referring to the Kremlin and the Third Reich.
The use of such a broad and unpredictable arsenal of weapons seemingly marks a shift in the Kremlin’s strategy.
The Kinzhal, an air-launched variant of the Iskander short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) that has also seen more frequent use in Ukraine, was unveiled by Putin in 2018 as a cornerstone of a modernized Russian arsenal.
Like virtually all ballistic missiles, it is hypersonic, meaning it travels at least five times the speed of sound, but it is also extremely difficult to detect as it can be launched from MiG-31 fighter jets, giving it greater range and the ability to launch from attack in multiple directions.
“Russia likely developed the unique missile to make it easier to attack critical European infrastructure… (its) speed, combined with the missile’s erratic flight trajectory and high maneuverability, could make interception more difficult,” said the Center for Strategic Defense. and International Studies (CSIS).
Russia’s use of the missile against Ukrainian targets last March was its first known use in combat, according to CSIS, and it was then used again in May.
Eight Iranian Shahed drones were also used in Thursday’s attacks, authorities said. A senior US defense official said on Thursday that Ukraine is becoming a “battle laboratory” for testing Iranian weapons outside the Middle East. The official was speaking ahead of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit to Israel, where Iranian-Russian military cooperation will be on the agenda.
“Everyone should prepare for what the threat scenarios look like when Iran takes the tactics, techniques and procedures it learned in Ukraine and starts using those coercive tactics here,” the Middle East official said.
The barrage came as most of Ukraine’s attention has been focused on Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian ground forces have been attacking for weeks and are on the verge of capturing.
Ukrainian troops have been determined to defend the city, even as some military experts are calling for a tactical withdrawal.
Zelensky said in an interview with DailyExpertNews on Tuesday that Kiev’s continued resistance in the city is “tactical,” warning that the Russians could advance into other key cities in the west if they capture Bakhmut.
“We understand that they can move on after Bakhmut. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be a public road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other cities in Ukraine, towards Donetsk,” he told DailyExpertNews’s Wolf Blitzer in an exclusive interview from Kiev. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the known death toll in Ukraine on Thursday was 11, not 16. This story has also been updated to clarify that virtually all ballistic missiles – not missiles in general – are hypersonic.
