US hardware helps Ukraine defend against increasingly heavy Russian missile and drone attacks

Kharkiv, Ukraine — Russia launched some of its most intense airstrikes to date against Ukraine‘s capital and other major cities overnight and Monday morning. Videos posted online showed children and adults running for shelters as air raid sirens sounded in kyiv.

The head of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a social media post that “up to 40 missiles” and “about 35 drones” were launched, virtually all of which were shot down by the country’s air defenses. Emergency workers doused the remains of flaming rockets that hit a highway in northern Kiev, and Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said fragments that hit another district set fire to a building, killing at least one person and injuring another. .

Searchlights combed the night skies over kyiv, looking for drones that would explode before they could crash to the ground. It was the second night in a row that swarms of Iranian-made planes took to the skies over the capital.

Video captured the moment one of them was shot down near the northern city of Chernihiv. That city is only about 20 miles from the border with Belarus, an autocratic country whose dictator has allowed Vladimir Putin to use his territory to launch attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

kyiv claimed that 58 of a staggering 59 drones launched overnight were shot down. That success is due not only to high-tech air defense systems that are forced into action almost every night, but also because the Ukrainians use good old-fashioned technology.

At an undisclosed military site, we watched Ukrainian forces test powerful new searchlights that help them locate those low-tech drones in the sky so they can be attacked from the ground.

But the other, deadlier threats flying over Ukraine require more advanced defenses. He arrival of US-made Patriot missile defense this spring has allowed the Ukrainians to intercept more powerful Russian missiles.

Oleksandr Ruvin, Kiyv’s chief forensic investigator, showed us what was left of a Russian “Kinzhal” hypersonic missile. The Kremlin had boasted that the weapon was unstoppable, even untouchable given its speed and maneuverability.

“Thanks to our American partners, we can touch this missile,” Ruvin told CBS News.

Now it sits, along with the remains of other advanced ballistic missiles, in a growing graveyard of destroyed Russian munitions, evidence of the massive war crimes dossier Ruvin is helping to compile.

He told CBS News that as Ukraine prepares for its imminent counteroffensiveRussia appears to be targeting your country’s air defense network, and such strikes have become more frequent.

Not all of Russia’s missiles stop, and another of its hypersonic rockets, an “Iskander,” slipped through the net early Monday and hit an apartment building in Kharkiv, according to the region’s governor. Governor Oleh Synehubov said six people, including two children and a pregnant woman, were injured in the attack and posted a video online of the damaged building.