Russian missile attack on Kyiv fails, all missiles and drones shot down by Ukrainian Air Defense
On Thursday, January 26, Russia carried out 2 massive drone and missile strikes on Ukraine. The Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down 47 out of the 55 missiles fired in the morning and all the Iranian kamikaze drones launched at night, said Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny.
All the missiles and drones flying towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv were shot down, which may indicate that Western air defense systems has made the Kyiv region impenetrable for Russian missiles, reports the Russian news outlet Agenstvo
"About 20 missiles were detected in the airspace over Kyiv today, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration. All of them, according to local authorities, were shot down," Agenstvo said.
Explosions, however, were heard in the Dnipro and Holosiivskyi districts of the capital, said the mayor of the city Vitali Klitschko. In the Holosiivskyi district, a missile hit a non-residential building. The Kyiv administration clarified that the building was hit by the wreckage of the downed missile. One person was killed by a falling missile debris, two were injured.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down all 24 Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones launched by the Russian army at night. About 15 of them were shot down over the Kyiv region, Agenstvo said.
Infrastructure facilities in Odessa, Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions also came under Russian missile strikes during the night. The Ukrainian electrical transmission system operator Ukrenergo reported damage to "high-voltage equipment" in the Dnipro region as a result of the missile strike. Explosions were also heard in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Commenting on the drone attack, the head of the President's Office, Andrei Yermak, wrote that in this way the Russian army "wants to overload the Ukrainian air defense system." According to Yermak, this did not work since most of the missiles that were launched after the drone attack were shot down.
This may indicate that due to the supply of Western air defense systems, Central Ukraine, including the Kyiv region and the capital itself, have become difficult to penetrate for Russian missiles and drones.
The last massive missile strike on Ukraine was on Saturday, January 14. It also turned out to be one of the deadliest in the entire war. 46 people died after a Russian missile hit a residential building in Dnipro. Then, the missile strikes were also preceded by drone attacks.