Andriy Yermak, head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that Russia has changed its war tactics. According to him, the Russian army began to use “false targets”.
“The Russians changed their tactics a little. They make active reconnaissance, use false targets. But air defense coped with most of the enemy missiles,” Yermak wrote on his Telegram channel.
A representative from the presidential office also made statements about the explosions in Ukraine’s Lvov, Dnepropetrovsk and Kirovograd regions. They occurred on the night of February 16, following the announcement of a nationwide weather alert.
The Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces also claims that Russia is using new tactics to attack Ukraine. Air Force Command spokesman Yuri Ignat said earlier that the Russian Armed Forces used unmanned aerial vehicles “to check our air defense somewhere, to determine our positions, to correct a possible missile attack in the morning” and only then. a missile attack.
However, according to him, the missile attacks on the night of February 16 were carried out without the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. “Missiles, cruise missiles of various types, exploded immediately,” Ignat said on Channel 24’s broadcast.
Consequences of night strokes
On the night of February 16, an air alert was declared throughout Ukraine. Arrivals were recorded in the north and west of the country, as well as in the Dnepropetrovsk and Kirovograd regions.
The head of the administration of the Lviv region Maxim Kozitsky said: three missiles hit a critical infrastructure facility. The fire, which started at the site of the collision, was quickly extinguished. The employees of the enterprise were in the shelters, there were no victims or injured.
“The only thing I can clarify is that this is not an object on which the electricity supply to the Lviv region depends,” he said. A shop wall collapsed in a nearby street due to the impact, and no one was injured.
Officials of the Kirovograd region said that there were people arriving at an infrastructure facility in the Kropyvnytskyi district in the morning. Poltava region administration announced two missiles hit an infrastructure facility in Kremenchuk. Initially, there were no casualties or injuries.
Sergei Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional administration, said that an industrial enterprise in the city of Pavlograd was damaged. According to him, a 79-year-old woman died, seven more were injured.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not report hitting targets.
“False Goals”
On February 15, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force claimed that the Russian military used balloons with radar corner reflectors to divert Ukraine’s air defenses.
“These old-fashioned ways the enemy is now using is not a probe, not a balloon, but just a balloon carrying a piece of metal. What they do it for: they want to be “worked” on, they use them as bait. They also have to wear out our air defenses,” he said.
He also expressed the view that these cannons could be used to “cover” drones. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force said that the military noticed corner reflector cannons in the sky over the Dnipropetrovsk region on February 12.
“Ukrainian air defense radar observes these air targets moving at low speed in air currents,” said Ignat, emphasizing that “the situation is under control.”
According to Ignat, the balloons are allegedly launched from Russian territory, but the Russian side has not officially confirmed this information.
As Strana reported, citing a source, the Ukrainian military used balloons to divert air defenses in 2022. The APU launched “an ordinary helium balloon with a foil-wrapped suspension wrapped in foil or flying at wind speed.” According to broadcast sources, air defense radars mistake such a ball for a metal object and react to it.
Andrey Gurulev, a member of the State Duma Defense Committee, former deputy commander of the Southern Military District, announced in early January a change in the tactics of conducting hostilities in Ukraine. According to him, the Russian army “learned to fight”, “to admit mistakes, analyze and draw conclusions”, and those mobilized “tried in combat operations.”