What It Takes to Protect Kyiv From Russian Bombardment

Marc Santora

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Russian air attacks on Kyiv have come in relentless waves. Yet very little has penetrated the patched-together but increasingly sophisticated air defense network. Here’s why.

Ukrainian servicemen demonstrated working on a mobile air defense system responsible for protecting a patch of sky just outside Kyiv.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Find it, target it, shoot it.

The drill is the same for Ukraine’s air defense crews as they work round the clock to combat the relentless barrage of missiles the Russians launch at Kyiv, mostly foiling the most intense bombardment of the capital since the first weeks of the war.

In the month of May alone, Russia bombarded Kyiv 17 times. It has fired hypersonic missiles from MIG-31 fighter jets and attacked with land-based ballistic missiles powerful enough to level an entire apartment block. Russian bombers and ships have fired dozens of long-range cruise missiles, and more than 200 attack drones have featured in blitzes meant to confuse and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.

It presents a constant struggle for Ukrainian defenders. Russian assaults can be unrelenting. They come mostly at night, but sometimes in daytime hours, as they did on Monday.

Even when Ukraine manages to blast missiles from the sky, falling debris can bring death and destruction. Early Thursday, Russia sent a volley of 10 ballistic missiles at Kyiv; Ukrainian officials said they were all shot down but that falling fragments killed three people, including a child, and injured more than a dozen others.

Yet overall, very little has penetrated the complex and increasingly sophisticated air defense network around Ukraine’s capital, saving scores of lives.

“We have no days off,” said Riabyi, the call sign of the 26-year-old “shooter” who is part of a two-person antiaircraft missile crew responsible for protecting just one patch of sky just outside Kyiv.

Cleaning debris from a building that was damaged in an aerial attack, in Kyiv on Sunday. Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Ukraine’s air defenses are a stitched-together patchwork of different weapons, many of them newly supplied by the West, protecting millions of civilians in Kyiv and other cities, and guarding critical infrastructure that includes four working nuclear power plants. Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, called it “a sort of a dog’s breakfast” of systems.

There are hundreds of people like Riabyi, equipped with American-made surface-to-air Stinger missiles and other portable weapons. Many more are operating more complex launchers that have arrived recently, like the Patriot (American), NASAMS (Norwegian-American) and SAMP/T (French-Italian). Ukraine also uses German-made Gepard antiaircraft guns, and a mix of Soviet-era air defenses.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said the recent air raids aimed at the capital were a “massive and unprecedented” assault intended to exhaust air defense systems, strike a powerful symbolic blow at the heart of the ancient capital and sow terror.

The State of the WarMoscow Drone Attack: A day after a drone strike on the Russian capital, Kremlin officials denounced Ukraine’s allies for refusing to condemn the attack, the first to hit civilian areas in the city since the start of the war.

Attacks on Kyiv: Russian air attacks on the Ukrainian capital have come in relentless waves, yet very little has penetrated Ukraine’s air defense network. Here’s why.

Military Aid: The Biden administration announced a $300 million package of weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine.

Putin’s Strategy: President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant. His options have narrowed, but he is still betting on outlasting his foes.

President Volodymyr Zelensky once again thanked “the defenders of the sky” in his address to the nation on Tuesday night. The battle in the skies, he made clear, is as important as the bloody struggle being waged by soldiers on land.

Air defense teams have managed to shoot down roughly 90 percent of the incoming missiles and drones recently and, remarkably, 100 percent of the ballistic missiles aimed at Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Those statistics could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian air defenses firing to stop drones in a bombardment targeting Kyiv early Tuesday morning.Credit...Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press

Air defense assets will also be critical in Ukraine’s looming counteroffensive — keeping newly acquired weapons safe as they stage for battle and then providing cover for Ukrainian troops if they manage to break through Russian lines.

Riabyi and his partner, Oleg, 38, are responsible for protecting a sector of the sky measuring around 10 square kilometers outside Kyiv. When the alarm sounds, he said, they race from a base in the Kyiv area to one of a handful of secret firing positions outside the city, pull the tarp off a truck-mounted Stinger system and prepare.

“If an air target is coming close to our sector, our commander gives us command No. 1: find and annihilate,” he said, demonstrating the procedure recently at a secret location outside Kyiv.

After the team fires, their position is exposed and they have two minutes to move or risk being targeted.

On the side of the team’s truck, Ukrainian tridents mark their successes. The first two tridents represent Russian fighter jets they said they shot down during the first days of the war. They said they had since shot down six Orlan reconnaissance drones, two Russian attack helicopters, and two Iranian-made Shahed drones.

On the side of a truck, Ukrainian tridents representing the numbers of drones, fighter jets and missiles that a Ukrainian air defense team says it has shot down.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Continuing success in the skies, however, is by no means assured.

Leaked Pentagon documents made public in April expressed deep concern that Russia could achieve air superiority as Ukraine runs out of antiaircraft missiles for Soviet-designed S-300 and Buk systems that still make up the backbone of Ukraine’s air defenses.

Since that analysis was leaked, Ukraine’s Western allies have stepped up delivery of new systems and ammunition. The arrival of two Patriot batteries in late April gave Ukraine its first system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.

Air defense systems rely on a variety of methods to take down incoming missiles. For a cruise missile, which can travel at around 500 miles per hour, an interceptor can target its heat signature or track a laser projected onto the missile by the Ukrainian defender, among other methods.

Ballistic missiles are capable of traveling much faster. Ukrainians target them with interceptor missiles that are also capable of traveling at high speed, and that have their own guidance and radar to assist in tracking at such speeds. The only proven defense against the powerful Russian Iskander missiles is the American Patriot air defense system, which can be fired within nine seconds of a target being identified.

Still, Ukraine must make difficult decisions about how to deploy limited resources.

Mr. Karako of the Missile Defense Project said the recent attacks on Kyiv have shown “how stressing and challenging a concerted air assault can be,” underscoring the need for Ukraine to keep building its defenses as the Russians try to wear them down.

While Ukrainian and Western officials have noted that Russia is most likely running low on precision missiles, and relying more on less accurate missiles and drones, Moscow has shown that it still has the capacity to stage attacks at a regular tempo.

“We have no days off,” said Riabyi, the call sign of the 26-year-old “shooter” who is part of a two-person mobile air defense crew.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion 15 months ago, it has fired over 5,000 missiles and attack drones at targets across Ukraine, according to a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But like Russia’s ground offensives, the air assaults have failed to produce the strategic military effects Moscow desired, according to the study, and Ukrainian air defenses have “greatly shaped the course of the war, limiting Russian striking power.”

Mr. Yusov, the representative of Ukrainian military intelligence, said that the Russians changed tactics after bombardment of civilian infrastructure and cities over the winter and early spring failed to cripple Ukraine’s ability to function.

Moscow is now targeting more military installations to undermine Ukraine’s counteroffensive, he said, while also setting its sights on Kyiv because it remains “an unconquered target for the aggressor.”

Peter Mitchell, writing for the Modern War Institute at West Point, asserted that the barrages are designed to fill the air with more incoming targets than the defenses can handle, “using a combination of land-, sea-, or air-launched missile platforms.”

For Kyiv residents, the nearly nightly blitzes have been exhausting and terrifying. The first alarm usually sounds after midnight and the assaults last for hours.

“I’m checking the information trying to understand what is flying and from where,” said Natalia Ulianytska, 32, a human rights activist who lives in Kyiv.

Patients and medical staff, including injured soldiers, took shelter in the basement of a hospital in Kyiv, during an air raid on Monday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

“When there’s a massive missile attack, I go to the bathroom together with my cat,” she said.

Ms. Ulianytska said she was not so much scared as anxious and “very angry.”

She knows when the Russian drones and missiles arrive by the thunderous explosions in the sky. Even when air defense teams successfully shoot down a target, there is danger as fiery wreckage rains down on the streets below.

Several people have been killed and injured by falling debris in Kyiv in the past month, and scores of businesses and apartment buildings have been damaged.

Volunteers setting up multiple searchlights, testing their range and whether they could spot airborne targets, in the Kyiv region on Monday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Riabyi, the gunner, said he has had to learn on the job. He was still going through training at a base in Ukraine’s west when Russia invaded.

His wife, pregnant with their first child, fled their home north of Kyiv before Russian soldiers could occupy the village; Riabyi was dispatched to Kyiv.

His daughter was born in May, but he did not see her for the first time until December. They spent a few days together and then he had to return to his post to help ensure she could sleep safely.

Anna Lukinova contributed reporting.

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. @MarcSantoraNYT