Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on Thursday, the 21st of December, that during the 22-month invasion, Russia has fired some 7 400 missiles and 3 700 Shahed drones at targets in Ukraine. Ukraine’s air defences, meanwhile, have successfully repelled 1 600 missiles and 2 900 drones, reports Reuters.
Yuriy Ihnat said the low missile-downing rate was due to the Russians’ use of supersonic ballistic missiles, which are much harder to shoot down, as well as the fact that the West supplied Ukraine with advanced Patriot air defence systems, which improved defence capabilities, only well into the war.
Meanwhile, cheaply produced Shaded drones in Iran are increasingly being used in Russian air strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure, not only on the front lines, but also far beyond them, in the south and east of the country. Ihnat said that Shaded drones were being shot down in ten to 15 regions every night.
The latest of the Russian drone strikes took place earlier on Friday morning,
the 22nd of December, when more than 28 Russian drones damaged residential buildings and injured people in the sixth attack this month on Kyiv.
The aftermath of Russian “Shahed” drone debris hitting a residential house in the Solomianskyi district of #Kyiv. The residential building caught fire after the attack, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko said. pic.twitter.com/BNbEsFENKo
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) December 21, 2023
Ukrainian air defences successfully shot down 24 of the 28 drones involved in the overnight strike, reports Reuters.
Russia claims that it is only targeting military targets and, despite thousands of documented civilian deaths, denies that it deliberately targeted civilians during the war.
In September 2022, Russia also began launching Shaded drones at infrastructure sites. Initially, the drones caused confusion for Ukraine’s air defences, as standard air defence radars found them harder to detect than missiles, and Ukrainians were forced to adapt. The cheaply made Shahed drones produced in Iran created a dilemma for Ukraine, as spending expensive air defence missiles to neutralise cheap drones did not seem cost-effective.
Ukraine now uses vehicles with mounted machine guns to shoot down drones.
Ihnats said that at first Ukrainian forces used a variety of weapons, including pistols and machine guns, to try to shoot down the Iranian-made Shahed drones, but then it became clear that the target was not so simple and stressed the need to prepare and adapt.
Western media and analysts have provided evidence, including satellite images, that Russia is setting up its own Shahed production facilities, Reuters reports.
Also read: A plane departs from the closed Kyiv airport on a technical flight
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