During an interview with the Associated Press news agency on Thursday Mykhailo Podolyak, the top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that in recent weeks the Russian military has been using a new method to weaken the Ukrainian resistance: launch missiles without warheads and balloons to overload the defense systems of the Ukrainian army with targets to intercept, thus having more chances to hit military targets with “real” missiles.
According to Podolyak, this new tactic would also be partly due to a shortage of warheads in the Russian army to load on the missiles, given that in recent months it had used a huge amount of them to attack Ukrainian energy infrastructure in view of the winter. Now it would therefore be using old missiles dating back to the Soviet era, deprived of warheads and used as decoys.
In addition to these missiles, Russia has also recently been using balloons equipped with reflective panels that would help to deceive the Ukrainian anti-aircraft. Six were spotted in the skies over the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Wednesday alone, and most were shot down.
According to Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, the reason for sending these balloons is quite simple: Russia hopes that the Ukrainian anti-aircraft will waste munitions – which could be used for more important targets – to shoot down balloons whose cost is negligible in comparison (the disproportion of costs is a problem that has already emerged in recent weeks regarding the Ukrainian missiles used to shoot down Russian drones ).
Source: ilPost
