WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia has fired 7,400 missiles, 3,700 Shahed drones in war so far, Kyiv says

Russia has launched about 7,400 missiles and 3,700 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine during its 22-month-old invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, illustrating the vast scale of Moscow's aerial assaults.

Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down 1,600 of the missiles and 2,900 of the drones, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. "We are faced with an enormous aggressor, and we are fighting back," he said.

He said the lower missile downing rate was due to the use of supersonic ballistic missiles, which are much harder to hit, as well as the fact that the West supplied Ukraine with advanced Patriot air defence systems only well into the war.

Ukraine has received advanced air defence systems, including several Patriots, from Western allies throughout the invasion, allowing it to shoot down more missiles.

Meanwhile the cheaply-produced, Iranian-made Shahed drones, known in Ukraine for their noisy petrol engines, have been used more and more frequently in Russia's aerial assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure far behind the war's front lines in the east and south of the country.

"Ten to 15 regions are involved in shooting down Shaheds every night," Ihnat said.

Russia says it only fires on military targets though Moscow has also admitted to targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Russia says it does not target civilians, despite thousands of documented civilian deaths throughout the war.

Russia began launching the drones at infrastructure facilities in September 2022. They initially confused Ukraine's air defences, as they were harder for standard air defence radars to detect than missiles, which forced Kyiv to adapt.

The use of the drones in massed attacks then created a dilemma for Ukraine as they were so cheap to produce it was not cost-effective to down them with expensive air defence missiles.

Ukraine now uses vehicles with mounted machine guns to shoot down drones.

"We were shooting at them with everything we could find, with pistols, submachine guns," Ihnat said, recalling the early attempts to down the drones. "Well, even then it became clear that the target is not simple, there are many complications, mistakes. You need to prepare."

Western media outlets and analysts have produced evidence, including satellite imagery, of Russia setting up its own Shahed production facilities.

** Mass drone attack hits several Kyiv districts

Russian drones bore down on the city of Kyiv early on Friday, with Mayor Vitali Klitschko and other officials reporting strikes on widely separated residential districts.

It was the sixth drone attack on the capital this month. Two people were injured.

Klitschko, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a drone had hit a block of flats in the Solomyanskyi district, south of the city centre, triggering a fire on the upper floors that was quickly brought under control.

Emergency services, also writing on Telegram, said several apartments were damaged on the 24th, 25th and 26th storeys of the building. Two people were injured, including one being treated in hospital.

The incident occurred a few hundred metres from a maternity hospital.

Air raid alerts were later lifted in almost all regions.

A video posted on social media showed a giant orange flame going skyward in the night.

Klitschko also said drone fragments had set fire to a house under construction in Darnytskyi district on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River that runs through the city.

He said there were no injuries. Pictures posted online showed construction materials strewn about the site.

Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's military administration, reported fragments from a downed drone had struck an apartment building in a third area - Holosiivskyi district - also south of the city centre.

Popko posted pictures showing smashed windows and heavy damage to apartments.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Top Russian general reveals details of Kiev's failed counteroffensive

Ukrainian military planners expected swift progress in their summer counteroffensive, which was to culminate in Moscow's so-called “land bridge to Crimea” being cut off, General Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian general staff, said on Thursday. He added that the attempt was thwarted by his forces.

The senior official briefed foreign military attaches on various aspects of Russia's military strategy, including steps taken to prevent a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which he said was the top priority for the country this year.

“The enemy plan was to blockade Melitopol by the end of the 15th day of the offensive,” Gerasimov said. The Ukrainians then planned to advance towards the Sea of Azov, the city of Mariupol, and the border of Crimea, he added.

Melitopol is a large city in Zaporozhye Region, located some 40 km away from the coast of the Azov Sea and about 15 km away from Molochnyi Lyman, a large coastal estuary connected with it.

Gerasimov noted that the core of the Ukrainian force used in the counteroffensive consisted of brigades trained and armed by Western nations. The grouping that was supposed to reach the Azov Sea initially included 50 battalions armed with over 230 tanks and more than 1,000 infantry fighting vehicles, half of them Western-made, he reported. The force was later boosted to 80 battalions, according to the general.

Russian troops prepared deep defensive lines to prepare for the planned attack. When Ukraine launched it on June 4, it “achieved minor advancement at the cost of colossal losses,” failing to breach “even the tactical zone of our defenses,” he stressed.

Additional supplies of Western weapons and the deployment of strategic reserves by Kiev failed to turn the tide, Gerasimov added. “Hence, the counteroffensive, which Ukraine and its NATO allies had touted widely, failed,” the general stated. The Russian official reiterated that the Ukraine conflict was a “hybrid proxy war against Russia by the US and its allies,”waged with Ukrainian hands. Washington wants to prolong the conflict by providing military assistance to Kiev, he claimed.

In addition to conducting active defense on the front line, Russian forces are using long-range precision weapons to attack Ukrainian “command sites, defense factories and critical objects with a military purpose,” Gerasimov said, adding that over 1,500 such targets have been hit. Degrading the Ukrainian military industrial capacity has been a major achievement, he noted.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Gerasimov’s counterpart in the Ukrainian military leadership, acknowledged in early November that the frontline situation had turned into a “stalemate.” Senior civilian officials, including President Vladimir Zelensky, disputed his assessment for weeks before finally admitting that the push against Russia was over. The president claimed that the new phase was necessitated by cold weather when he conceded in early December.

** Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed – ex-NATO general

Kiev’s much-touted summer counteroffensive operation has failed to produce “expected” results, and instead resulted in heavy casualties for the Ukrainian side, Czech President Petr Pavel admitted in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday.

Launched back in June, the Ukrainian counteroffensive was hyped up as a turning point for Kiev’s forces which would push Russian troops out of former Ukrainian territories. However, six months after the start of the operation, the Ukrainian side has yet to achieve any significant territorial gains and has instead suffered extremely heavy casualties. 

Pavel, who previously served as the chief of the general staff of the Czech Army and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, suggested that the main reason for Ukraine’s failure was that the West did not provide it with enough modern weaponry.

“Supporting countries were reluctant to deliver modern equipment, some elements arrived later, and when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive, the ratio of forces did not allow for rapid success,” he told Le Monde.

Before Kiev had even launched its summer offensive in June, Pavel says he had also warned that it would be a difficult operation because he “didn’t want to create excessive expectations.”

“Painting a picture of quick success is dangerous, especially with an enemy like Russia, whose capabilities and resources should never be underestimated,” he said.

The Czech president went on to suggest that Kiev should now try to change its tactics and switch to consolidating its defense lines instead of launching offensive operations that are only resulting in heavy casualties but no territorial gains.

“They could thus save their forces in anticipation of a resumption of these operations in the spring,” Pavel said.

On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry estimated that the Ukrainian military had suffered nearly 400,000 casualties since February 2022, losing nearly half of its military personnel over the course of the counteroffensive. Ralph D. Thiele, a retired German Air Force colonel and NATO staffer, also claimed on Thursday that some 800 Ukrainian troops were being killed or wounded every day.

Last week, German news outlets Die Welt and Bild also reported that Ukraine may be gathering forces and drawing up new war plans for a fresh counteroffensive in 2024, while changing its tactics in the meantime to inflict maximum losses on Moscow.

Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly pointed out the Kiev was essentially sending its soldiers on suicide missions, with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying the Ukrainian leadership had grown desperate after failing to achieve anything in its counteroffensive.

Reuters/RT