Flight route along the Dnipro
Expert explains Russian tactics in drone attacks
01/02/2023, 6:55 p.m
New waves of combat drones from Russia continue to fall on Ukraine. A Ukrainian military expert says he sees a pattern in the attacks. The drones would fly mostly at night and along a large river. There should be good reasons for that.
According to an expert, the Russian attacks with so-called kamikaze drones on targets in Ukraine are deliberately carried out at night and along the Dnipro River. “Logically, not everything is visible in the sky at night,” Ukrainian colonel Vladislav Zelesnyov told the RBK-Ukraina agency. The flight route from the south along the Dnipro was also chosen in order to avoid the Ukrainian air defenses if possible.
On Monday night, Russia attacked Ukraine with combat drones for the fifth night in a row. There was an air alert in many parts of the country. Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that the energy infrastructure in the capital Kyiv had been damaged again. There are power outages in the city, which also affected the heat supply.
According to the Ukrainian air defense, one missile and 43 drones were shot down, 22 of them in Kyiv alone. According to Klitschko, a 19-year-old was injured and treated in hospital after a house was hit in a Russian attack.
For days, Russia has been increasingly attacking at night with Iranian-type Shahed-136 kamikaze combat drones. Russian military bloggers reported that in addition to Kyiv, the Poltava, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions were affected. Russia has also repeatedly reported drone attacks from the Ukrainian side. According to Governor Alexander Bogomas, the energy infrastructure was hit on Monday in the Bryansk region near the Russian border. As a result, the power went out in one place. There were no injuries, Bogomas said.