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February 19, 2023 | 2:48 p.m
Russia is likely using balloons over Ukraine to act as decoys to gather information about the country’s defense systems and force the military to use valuable missiles to shoot them down, Britain’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
In an intelligence update posted on Twitter, the The British Ministry of Defense said balloons or “balloon-shaped objects” were sighted in the air over Ukraine last week – a marked shift in tactics by the Russian military.
“It is likely that the balloons were Russian. They likely represent a new tactic used by Russia to obtain intelligence on Ukrainian air defense systems and force Ukrainians to use up valuable stockpiles of surface-to-air missiles and ammunition,” the warning said.
The Defense Ministry said the Ukrainian military spotted several balloons with radar reflectors over Kiev on February 15 and shot down at least six of them.
More balloons were sighted over Dnipropetrovsk on February 12.
And on February 14, a “balloon-shaped” object forced the closure of Moldovan airspace for several hours.
A Russian missile trail during an attack near Kiev on February 15. Portal
“There is a reasonable possibility that this was a Russian balloon blown out of Ukrainian airspace,” the ministry said.
Colonel Margo Grosbert, the head of the Estonian Defense Forces, said last week that it appeared Russia was using relatively cheap weather balloons to probe air defense systems and force the military to use up ammunition.
“It wastes anti-aircraft weapons and exhausts crews. It also makes anti-aircraft crews visible as a result of their actions because then you can see where the missiles are coming from,” he said.
Grosberg said the use of balloons was a recent development in the war and wondered if Russia had borrowed the idea from the Chinese, who sent a spy balloon over the US earlier this month.
Britain’s MoD says Russia is likely to use balloons to force Ukraine’s military to spend valuable ammunition to shoot them down. Getty Images
The Chinese balloon was first spotted entering US airspace near Alaska on Jan. 28, but its presence wasn’t known until Feb. 1 when it was sighted in the skies over Montana.
It traversed a number of Midwestern states, including some sensitive military installations, until two US Air Force jet fighters shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
Since then, three other unidentified objects have been shot down over North America – off the north coast of Alaska, over Canada’s Yukon Territory, and over Lake Huron near the Canadian border.
The Biden administration said the three objects appeared to belong to private companies or research or leisure companies, rather than Chinese spy planes.
Ukrainian forces load shells for an anti-aircraft gun in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on January 15. Portal
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, said the military was more concerned about Russia dropping ballistic missiles into the country than about levitating weather balloons into its airspace.
“They are trying to distract us,” Ihnat told the Washington Post last week, noting that Russia hopes Ukrainian forces will fire on them and reveal their locations.
But he said Ukrainian forces know the difference between a balloon and a drone.
“They’re not new. These are your grandfather’s methods, invented during the Soviet Union,” he said.
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