On Thursday, the Russian armed forces were the first to launch 6 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles over Ukraine in their new “retaliation” attack, Ukrainian Pravda reports.

“The enemy used a wide range of weapons. Why does he do this? To divert the attention of air defense,” Colonel Yuriy Ignat, the spokesman of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on television.

According to him, the Russian armed forces struck from all directions, including from the waters of the Black, Azov and Caspian seas, again using ballistic missiles that Ukrainian forces cannot intercept.

“This time, 6 Pumnal aeroballistic missiles (ballistic missiles are not launched from aircraft) were launched.” I don’t remember so many Daggers being fired in one attack during this war,” Ignat said.

He explained that “the enemy does not have many of these missiles, we are talking about dozens, according to some data, up to 50”. Ignat also reported that Russia on Thursday also launched 6 Kh-22 (“Kitchen”) missiles, which have the most destructive power due to the warhead weighing 950 kilograms.

The Kh-22 is a powerful anti-ship missile that Russia has also used against ground targets in Ukraine. They are considered to be extremely inaccurate if used for this purpose, putting large numbers of civilians at risk of death.

There are still conflicting data on the number of missiles in Russia

Ignat reminded that the anti-aircraft warning sirens should not be ignored, as they are activated every time the MiG-31K aircraft take off from which the Kinzhal missiles are launched.

The Ukrainian military said that despite the large number of hypersonic missiles launched by Russia in one strike, this does not indicate “any change in enemy tactics.”

One possibility is that Russia is running out of other types of missiles it would normally use for such attacks, so it is turning to more expensive designs.

But during the war, Western analysts were repeatedly wrong about the number of missiles Russia would still have in its arsenal, and predictions are conflicting.

Thus, in December, the Secretary of the National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov estimated that Russia could carry out 3-4 more large-scale attacks before the reserves are exhausted.

But at the end of January, the head of the Estonian intelligence service, Margo Grosberg, said that Russia could launch repeated massive missile strikes on Ukraine within nine months.

Ukraine’s air force said on Thursday that Russia had fired 81 missiles in its latest attack on the country, which again targeted civilian infrastructure.

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