KYIV, Ukraine (AP) 鈥� Russia has switched its aerial strike tactics to fool Ukraine鈥檚 air defenses, using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons, a senior Ukrainian official said Thursday.
鈥淭he Russians are definitely changing tactics鈥� as approaches its one-year anniversary, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The goal of the decoy missiles, Podolyak said, is to overwhelm Ukraine鈥檚 air defense systems by offering too many targets.
鈥淭hey want to overload our anti-aircraft system to get an extra chance to hit infrastructure facilities,鈥� Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine's air defenses are adapting to the challenge.
In the AP interview, Podolyak also renewed Ukraine鈥檚 appeals for long-range missiles that would enable it to strike Russian troop concentrations far behind the front lines, and also stressed that 鈥渨e just don鈥檛 have enough shells.鈥�
He argued that speeded-up supplies of weaponry from Western partners would quicken an end to the war and said drawn-out war would favor Russia, not least because its population is more than three times that of Ukraine.
鈥淎 protracted war is the slow death of Ukraine,鈥� he said. 鈥淩ussia has enough time. Why? They will live in poverty. They always live like this. They don鈥檛 need comfort. They can live in a camp. They can live in isolation.鈥�
But nearly a year into the Russian invasion, the human, economic and diplomatic costs are proving huge for Moscow. Its military difficulties include a growing shortage of missiles, Ukrainian and Western officials say. It has fired wave upon wave of missiles and killer drones at Ukraine since October, in a sustained and targeted effort to take out power supplies and other essential infrastructure over the winter.
Podolyak said Russia is facing 鈥渕issile exhaustion" and that shortages are forcing its change in tactics. He said Russia is mixing older Soviet-era missiles with 鈥渘ew missiles that have some value.鈥�
Moscow has not acknowledged problems with weapon supplies. But Britain's Defense Ministry said in late November that Russia appeared to be stripping nuclear warheads off old cruise missiles and then firing the missiles as blanks at Ukraine. 鈥淩ussia almost certainly hopes such missiles will function as decoys and divert Ukrainian air defenses," it said.
Ukraine's Western allies have progressively boosted the country's air defenses in response to Russia's of the power grid and other targets. The sophisticated Western-supplied systems have helped deny air superiority to Russia鈥檚 much larger air force and blunted its missile and drone attacks.
The changed Russian tactics 鈥� seen by some as evidence that Moscow is adapting its brute-force war strategy into something more nuanced 鈥� appeared to pay dividends Thursday when Russian forces fired 36 missiles in a two-hour overnight burst. Ukrainian air defense batteries shot down 16 of them 鈥� a lower rate of success than against some previous Russian waves.
Another new feature of Russia鈥檚 strategy is the use of what Podolyak called 鈥渟pecial air balloons.鈥� He wouldn鈥檛 go into detail about their suspected purpose. But they may be intended to possibly confuse or provide intelligence about Ukrainian air defenses.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine鈥檚 National Security and Defense Council, said the Russian balloons carried reflectors to mislead air defenses, and indicate that Moscow is "starting to use other methods.鈥�
Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said: 鈥淭he enemy wants our air defense systems to spend ammunition on these balloons, the cost of which is quite small.鈥�
Kyiv鈥檚 military administration said six such balloons were detected floating over the capital on Wednesday. Ukrainian air defenses shot down most of them.
Russia's new use of balloons in Ukraine comes after the Biden administration , saying it was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals.
Russia's latest barrage of cruise and other missiles hit targets in the north, west, south, east and center of the country, Ukrainian officials said.
One of the strikes killed a 79-year-old woman and injured at least seven other people in the eastern city of Pavlohrad, the regional governor said.
Overall, Russian attacks and shelling over the previous 24 hours killed at least seven people, Ukraine鈥檚 presidential office said Thursday.
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Follow AP鈥檚 coverage of the war in Ukraine:
John Leicester And Hanna Arhirova, The Associated Press
