Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky called the wave of Russian drones that struck his nation overnight into Tuesday a “record number”, the largest of the war so far, Kyiv claiming to have destroyed or disabled very nearly all targets.
Russia launched 192 aerial attacks on Ukraine overnight into Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian air force claims, the giant record-setting wave comprising of four Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 188 drones, they said. Many but not all of the drones were of the Iranian-designed Shahed one-way ‘suicide bomb’ aircraft drones, it was stated.
Ukraine alleges in its own state media to have taken out almost the whole wave, one way or another. Per their own claims, 76 of those 188 drones were shot down and a further 95 were “lost from tracking”. This was “likely” down to successful use of electronic counter-measures causing the drones to crash, Ukraine said, while a further five seem to have either turned back or been redirected to Russian ally Belarus.
If true this would have left just 12 drones of a wave of 188 unmolested in one way or another, a not inconsiderable achievement for Ukrainian air defence in the face of a contrived swarm attack likely meant to overwhelm air defences.
Yet a certain number of the drones and missiles did cause damage, either because they managed to evade the screen or became they were shot down so close to their targets falling debris did at least some of Moscow’s work. Particularly impacted was the city of Ternopil which saw its energy infrastructure particularly heavily hit, depriving 70 per cent of the Western side of the city of power.
Ukrainian state media cited city governor Vyacheslav Nehoda as having said: “The consequences are bad because the facility was significantly affected and this will have impact on the power supply of the entire region for a long time”.
Kyiv has not been specific on casualties, but two people were reported killed in a Russian missile strike on the city of Sumy [pictured, above].
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the drone wave a “record” Russian attack and used it to call upon the country’s global backers to double down on their sanctions regimes against Moscow, saying such attacks would not be possible if Russia couldn’t import parts.
The Ukrainian leader claimed each Russian drone contained 85 components sourced abroad, stating: “Such attacks are possible only because the criminal circumvents sanctions.”
The heavy night, which follows other major attacks against cities in recent days that suggest a new normal is emerging in the war after it passed 1,000 days. While all talk last week was of escalation as Ukraine started striking Russia directly with Western-supplied missiles, now these strikes continue — with Russia’s responses in-kind — much as they did before.
Even after Russia launching what it claimed was a new, invulnerable, ‘hypersonic’ ballistic missile at Ukraine last week astonished global observers, a subsequent announcement by President Vladimir Putin that this weapon would be put into mass production barely registered abroad. The world appears to continue to adapt quickly to the developing war in Ukraine.
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