Ukraine's air defense scores major success, shoots down over 340 Russian missiles and drones

Ukraine's military shot down or disabled hundreds of incoming Russian missiles and drones overnight Tuesday, in a significant air defense victory in which recent deliveries of high-tech, European-funded interceptor missiles played a key role, data released by the Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) showed on Tuesday.

The Kremlin, on the night of the fifth massive attack targeting Ukraine's power grid and civilian heating infrastructure since early December, discovered 373 attack weapons, among them 339 Iranian-designed Shahed suicide drones, 18 Iskander-M or S-300 ballistic missiles, 15 Kh-101 cruise missiles launched from low-flying bombers and a single Zircon anti-ship missile, a Ukrainian Air Force statement said.

Ukrainian air defenses, during about six hours of engagements in airspace mainly over the central and northern regions of the country – although they did not completely stop the Russian attack – hit deep into waves of Russian aircraft and robotic missiles, shooting down or suppressing a total of 342 of all types, official counts said.

Ukraine's result against the most dangerous and difficult-to-detect weapons – ballistic missiles that fly up to five times faster than the speed of sound and carry nuclear warheads containing nearly a ton of powerful explosives – was the biggest success of the night and a notable reversal of the relatively porous air defense operations of just a week earlier.

Of the 18 ballistic missiles launched by Russia from locations within the Russian Federation or on occupied Ukrainian territory, according to the UAF's calculation, 14 were destroyed by ground defenses: a 77 percent downing rate.

Russian losses in high-tech, ground-based cruise missiles were equally painful for Moscow: Of the 15 launched by bombers from airspace over the Caspian Sea or central Russia, only two managed to get past Ukrainian air defenses to hit their targets, for an 86 percent hit rate.

Just a week ago, during the previous major Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine, a smaller Kremlin attack was two or three times more effective.

Of the 18 ballistic missiles launched by Russia against Ukrainian homes and businesses during the night of January 12-13, Ukrainian air defenses managed to stop only two, achieving a downing rate of 11 percent.

Ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that night hit the cities of Kiev, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Odessa, Sumy, Kharkiv and Zhytomyr.

Power and energy generation substations were heavily targeted, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents of the capital region of Kiev without electricity and heating due to cold weather of -15°C, in some cases for two days.

The missile strikes also destroyed a logistics terminal in Kharkiv, killing four people and leaving 46,000 households without electricity in Odessa. The Kremlin attacks also hit educational buildings, railway infrastructure and port facilities.

Russian attack plans a week later were equally ambitious but, on Monday night, far less effective, with only two to four ballistic missiles launched by Russian Federation forces capable of reaching targets in the Kiev region, the epicenter and main focus of the night's attacks, and only one or two ballistic missiles reaching the vicinity of the secondary target city of Vinnytsia, tracking data released by the air warfare monitoring group PPO Radar showed on Tuesday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, during a joint press conference with Czech President Petr Pavel on January 16, said that in recent weeks, Ukrainian air defense had been dangerously short and, in some sectors, completely without critical ammunition for air defense weapons, especially interceptor missiles.

This ammunition shortage had not been resolved until "just this morning," the Ukrainian leader said.

In the hours following the attacks on the night of January 17-18, Zelensky told Kiev reporters that Recent deliveries of much-needed interceptor missiles had "significantly helped" in night air battles.

Senior Russian officials, led by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, have claimed that Russia wishes no harm to Ukrainian civilians. The view of official Kiev and most Ukrainian civilians is that these Russian officials are not telling the truth.

In rough figures, according to open sources and calculations by the Ukrainian Air Force, during 2025 the Russian Federation launched between 50,000 and 55,000 attack drones, 1,000 to 1,500 cruise missiles, and 500 to 800 ballistic missiles against targets inside Ukraine – mostly civilian.

With more than 50 countries having donated or sold military equipment to Ukraine since Russia's second full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) air defense operates weapons ranging from World War I-era machine guns to US-made Patriot systems that launch the PAC-3 interceptor missile, and the Franco-Italian SAMP/T system that launches the Aster missile.

Of all the weapons in the Ukrainian inventory, only one – the US-made Patriot firing the battle-tested PAC-3 interceptor – is capable of shooting down a ballistic missile and is produced in large quantities.

In late December, the Kremlin launched a long-awaited rapid bombing campaign against Ukraine's electricity grid and heating infrastructure with the potential goal of ending the Russo-Ukrainian War on Russian terms, swaying Ukrainian voters enough to pressure the Ukrainian national leadership to stop resisting Russian occupation.

Planned to strike during the holiday season for maximum effect against Ukrainian morale, six major nighttime attacks have been launched by the Kremlin since early December: on December 5-6, December 22-23, December 26-27, January 12-13, and January 17-18.

The first attack was the largest of the entire war with 51 missiles and 653 drones launched. This and the almost equally large attacks of December 26-27 (519 drones and 40 missiles) were mainly focused on the capital Kiev, with secondary attacks against the regional centers of Odessa, Dnipro, Cherkasy, and Volyn.

A Ukrainian military source told the Kyiv Post that shortages of PAC-3 interceptor missiles needed by Ukrainian Patriot system operators to counter ballistic missiles, and AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles needed by Ukrainian fighter pilots to counter incoming cruise missiles, had been apparent since mid-December.

In one video published Recently, from the Ukrainian Air Force, a technician working with Ukrainian F-16 fighters said that these aircraft would fly more often and score more kills of Russian long-range missiles if the Ukrainian military were able to receive larger volumes of air-to-air missiles.

The Trump administration in late February halted arms sales to Ukraine as the White House shifted foreign policy to move closer to Russia. In July, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Washington media that the Pentagon would also limit sales of U.S. weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot interceptor missiles, due to shortages in the U.S. arsenal.

Based on the latest US procurement figures, the price of a single PAC-3 missile purchased by Ukraine's allies from the US to defend Ukrainian skies from Russian ballistic missiles would cost around $4 million, plus a 10 percent "special markup" fee imposed by Trump.

Zelensky, in comments to Kiev media on Tuesday, said that AFU units spent about $80 million worth of air defense ammunition in these fighting.

In a post on TruthSocial on January 7, Trump accused Raytheon, the PAC-3/Patriot manufacturer, of not preparing for production expansion and instead paying large dividends to shareholders.

There was no immediate public reaction from the corporation. Over the past twelve months, Raytheon's stock value has risen by about 66 percent, with about half of those gains coming in the past six months.

The Geo Post