A massive cruise missile strike on Friday shows that Russia has changed its tactics of using long-range strikes, but Moscow has a problem, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an assessment on Saturday.

Early Friday morning, Russia launched its first major wave of cruise missile strikes against Ukraine since early March 2023.

Although Ukraine shot down most of the missiles, at least 25 civilians were killed.

The attacks signal a change in Russia’s use of long-range strikes.

The surge involved fewer missiles than the one in the winter and was unlikely to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

There is a real possibility that Russia tried to intercept Ukrainian military reserve units and supplies recently delivered to Ukraine.

The problem is that Russia has an ineffective targeting process and prioritizes achieving military objectives over preventing collateral damage, including civilian casualties, British military intelligence said.

Russian military says it hit military targets with “high-precision weapons”

Russia’s drone strike on Ukraine on Friday morning was aimed at reserve units of the Ukrainian army to prevent them from moving to the front line, given the counteroffensive that the Ukrainian army is preparing, the Russian agency reports. said the defense minister, quoted by Reuters.

“At night, the Russian Air Force carried out a missile strike with the use of long-range, high-precision weapons against the points of temporary deployment of reserve units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” said a spokesman at a briefing at the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Ihor Konashenkov’s defense, Agerpres notes.

“The aim of the raid has been achieved. All intended targets were hit. The advance of the enemy’s reserves into the area of ​​hostilities was disrupted,” said a Russian official.

For its part, the Ukrainian army claims to have shot down 21 out of 23 X-101/X-555 missiles and two drones. The missiles were launched around 04:00 by Tu-95 strategic bombers from the Caspian Sea area.

The military administration in Kyiv said that 11 Russian cruise missiles and two drones were shot down over the capital, and there were no casualties or significant damage.

But there are victims and damages in other cities, especially in the city of Uman in the center of the country, where a residential building was hit, the preliminary balance of victims among the civilian population after this raid on the whole of Ukraine was 19 dead.

Russia denies that it is targeting populated areas, but fragments of its missiles, shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems, fall precisely on such territories and therefore cause casualties among the civilian population.

Since the October attack on the Crimean bridge, which it attributed to Ukrainian intelligence services, Russia has regularly carried out missile strikes and drone strikes, mostly targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

These mass raids, during which the Russian military used dozens of missiles, have become less frequent in recent months.

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