In the fight against Ukraine, the Russian army is now using mock attacks. What seems strange at first has a strategic background.
Russia has changed its tactics in airstrikes in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s presidential adviser. Moscow is using dummy missiles without warheads and balloons to deceive Ukraine’s air defenses, Mykhailo Podoliak said in an interview with the AP news agency on Thursday. The aim of the new tactic is to overwhelm air defenses by offering too many targets.
Read more: Major air battle threatens – Putin pulls fighter jets together
“They want to overload our air defense system to get an additional opportunity to hit the infrastructure,” Podoliak said. However, Ukrainian systems are adapting to the challenge, he added.
Again and again waves of attacks
Since October, Russia has launched numerous waves of attacks on Ukraine using rockets and combat drones. In winter, the main focus was on power supply and other important infrastructure. Russia no longer has enough missiles and is therefore forced to change tactics, Podoliak said. Moscow is therefore mixing older Soviet-era missiles with “new missiles that have some value”. Russia has acknowledged problems with its arms stockpile.
Russian troops fired 36 rockets at Ukraine in two hours on Thursday night. Anti-aircraft batteries intercepted 16 of them – a lower success rate than previous waves of attacks.
In the video: Ukrainian correspondent Christian Wehrschütz in the ZIB2 video about possible arms deliveries to Ukraine
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Navigation account 20 minutes, mrr Time02/17/2023, 07:13| Act: 02/17/2023, 09:01