About an hour and a half drive from kyiv, the unit stops in the middle of the fields, on a dirt road, at the meeting point transmitted a few minutes before. Major “Kansas” and his men are soldiers on the move. “The Russian army is mainly targeting our command posts and our radar stations. We mobile units are fine, they don’t have time to spot us.”, says Kansas. The unit of 1129e The “Bila Tserkva” anti-aircraft defense regiment (named after a town in the Kiev region) is one of the capital’s guardian angels, those who track down Russian planes and missiles every day in the Ukrainian sky.
The Moscow army carried out, on Friday, February 10, a new major air attack against cities in Ukraine. According to the staff, 71 cruise missiles, 31 surface-to-surface missiles and seven kamikaze drones targeted the territory. If 61 cruise missiles and five drones were shot down in flight, Zaporizhia (south) and Kharkiv (north-east) were particularly affected. Energy sites were struck in six regions. Above Kyiv, “10 missiles were shot down”said the mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko, indicating that there was still “damage to the power grid”.
A political message
Russian air attacks against cities and civilian infrastructure have been part of the Russian army’s winter strategy since the wave of bombings on October 10, 2022. At the time, Moscow had just recorded two crushing defeats on the battlefield, with the reconquests of Izioum, then of Lyman, in the northeast of the country, by Ukrainian forces. For four months, these salvoes of missiles have followed one another at regular intervals, and millions of Ukrainians have been deprived of electricity and heating. The attacks are also sometimes a political message. While the last salvo fired against Kiev came after Germany announced an agreement on tank deliveries, Friday’s attack took place the day after a European tour by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who urged its allies to supply it with long-range missiles and combat aircraft.
“kyiv is almost safe now, although no anti-aircraft system can intercept all targets,” says 1129 officere regiment
In kyiv, anti-aircraft alerts sounded several times on Friday, first at night, then again in the morning. As usual, some residents rushed to shelters, including metro stations, while others continued to go about their business as if nothing had happened. At kyiv central station, only the closing of the entrance hall for a few hours betrayed a certain nervousness. Apart from that, the travelers continued to stroll on the square, and the trains coming from Poland to arrive on time.
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