Ukraine intercepts nearly all Russian missiles in overnight barrage
Mike Brest
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The Ukrainian military said it intercepted all but one of the nearly three dozen Russian missiles launched on Wednesday night into Thursday.
Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said 29 of the 30 Russian missiles (22 Kh-101/Kh-555, 6 Kalibrs, and 2 Iskander-K) were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, and four additional Russian drones were destroyed.
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Kyiv was targeted in the strikes, while the head of the city’s military administration counted it as the ninth air attack on the capital this month.
At least one person was killed, while two others were wounded in one Russian missile strike in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Wednesday night.
“Late night, the enemy launched a missile attack on Odesa. The attack was carried out using various missiles from different directions. Most of them were destroyed by air defense, but unfortunately [an] industrial infrastructure was hit,” Ukraine’s Operational Command South wrote in a Facebook statement.
In Kherson, a 5-year-old boy named Vsevolod was killed during the Russian shelling, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address.
Days ago, Russian military officials claimed it destroyed one of the Patriot missile defense systems in Ukraine, though there have been conflicting claims by both sides as there is an incentive to lie about the apparent damage to the system.
“Everything is fine with the Patriot,” Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told the Washington Post, and an anonymous U.S. defense official told the outlet that a Patriot system suffered an indirect hit on Tuesday but remains operational.
The Patriot system is a complex weapon made up of numerous components, many of which are mounted on trucks and can require as many as 90 service members to operate and maintain it, and the training takes months.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said their air defenses had intercepted 18 out of 18 missiles, including six hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles in that day’s attack from Russia.
The frequent aerial strikes come as Ukraine has made headway in the besieged city of Bakhmut, where the country’s military has refused to give the town up to Russian forces for months, incurring more than 100,000 Russian casualties in the last six months or so, according to U.S. officials.
“In the course of the fighting, our units continue to advance on the flanks despite the fact that they do not currently have an advantage in personnel, ammunition, and equipment,” Serhii Cherevatyi, the spokesman for the Eastern Grouping of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Ukrainian TV.
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The six months of fighting have destroyed the town, with Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar saying recently that Russia was “destroying the city with artillery,” even as Ukrainian forces said they were making incremental gains in the area.
Ukraine is expected to launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive in the coming weeks, though some have suggested the early stages have begun.