Russians keeping Kinzhal missiles to hit Ukraine’s strategic objects - Ihnat

That’s according to Colonel Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman for the Air Force Command, who spoke at the national telethon, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

There are not so many Kinzhals. This is a weapon that Putin was very proud of, referring to it as ‘hypersonic.’ But they are trivially few of them, so the Russians save them for hitting the most important targets. And this time, unfortunately, their most important strategic targets were one of the objects in Zaporizhia and one of the energy infrastructure facilities in Kyiv. This is their strategic goal – to leave people, say, some district in the capital, without electricity," he said.

Ihnat added that it is practically impossible to shoot down such a missile because there are no means to shoot down such extremely high-speed objects. Especially since the Kinzhal is a missile that flies along a ballistic trajectory. "That is, the MiG-31 fighter jet delivers it to the upper layers of the atmosphere, launches it there, and then it flies, approaches the target, and descends on at great velocity," the spokesman said.

Answering the question about the Kh-55 missile with a nuclear warhead simulator that was shot down outside Kyiv on Thursday, the spokesman expressed the opinion that these are being used to defocus our air defense capabilities.

"It can also be used as a faux target. So that we waste our missiles on them," he said.

Ihnat added that Kyiv always remains in the focus of Russian attacks. "For the enemy, this is a priority target – the capital itself, its critical infrastructure," the spokesman said.

As reported, on the morning of January 26, a large-scale air raid alert went off across Ukraine due to a massive missile attack by Russian forces. Hits were recorded in Vinnytsia, Odesa, and Kyiv.

In the capital, as a result of a Russian missile hitting the Holosiivsky district, one person was killed and two were injured.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, informed the public that the air defense forces destroyed 47 of the 55 missiles launched at Ukraine on Thursday.