Emergency staff work at a site of an apartment building damaged during a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 13, 2023. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo
(Reuters) - Russia has launched about 7,400 missiles and 3,700 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine during its 22-month-old invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, illustrating the vast scale of Moscow's aerial assaults.
Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down 1,600 of the missiles and 2,900 of the drones, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. "We are faced with an enormous aggressor, and we are fighting back," he said.
He said the lower missile downing rate was due to the use of supersonic ballistic missiles, which are much harder to hit, as well as the fact that the West supplied Ukraine with advanced Patriot air defence systems only well into the war.
Ukraine has received advanced air defence systems, including several Patriots, from Western allies throughout the invasion, allowing it to shoot down more missiles.
Meanwhile the cheaply-produced, Iranian-made Shahed drones, known in Ukraine for their noisy petrol engines, have been used more and more frequently in Russia's aerial assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure far behind the war's front lines in the east and south of the country.
"Ten to 15 regions are involved in shooting down Shaheds every night," Ihnat said.
Russia says it only fires on military targets though Moscow has also admitted to targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Russia says it does not target civilians, despite thousands of documented civilian deaths throughout the war.
Russia began launching the drones at infrastructure facilities in September 2022. They initially confused Ukraine's air defences, as they were harder for standard air defence radars to detect than missiles, which forced Kyiv to adapt.
The use of the drones in massed attacks then created a dilemma for Ukraine as they were so cheap to produce it was not cost-effective to down them with expensive air defence missiles.
Ukraine now uses vehicles with mounted machine guns to shoot down drones.
"We were shooting at them with everything we could find, with pistols, submachine guns," Ihnat said, recalling the early attempts to down the drones. "Well, even then it became clear that the target is not simple, there are many complications, mistakes. You need to prepare."
Western media outlets and analysts have produced evidence, including satellite imagery, of Russia setting up its own Shahed production facilities.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Tom Balmforth)
