Overnight Russian strike on Ukraine: seven missiles and 22 drones shot down

Source: Ukraine’s Air Defense Force

In the early hours of September 4, Russian troops unleashed a combined missile and drone barrage targeting several regions of Ukraine.  Ukraine’s Air Force said their swift response helped  intercept a “significant number” of incoming threats.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, their radar units detected and tracked a total of 42 enemy targets. The onslaught included:

• Two Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal” ballistic missiles, launched by MiG-31K aircraft from Russian airspace in the Tula region.
• Two Kh-22 cruise missiles fired by Tu-22M3 bombers from the Black Sea.
• Six Kh-101 cruise missiles launched by Tu-95MS bombers from the Volgograd region.
• Three “Iskander-K” cruise missiles coming from occupied Crimea.
• 29 Shahed-131/136 strike drones, launched from Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine’s air defences said they shot down 29 of the 42 aerial threats. These included:

• Four Kh-101 cruise missiles.
• Three “Iskander-K” cruise missiles.
• 22 Shahed-131/136 drones.

The report said that six drones were lost from radar, likely due to electronic countermeasures, while one drone crossed into Belarusian airspace.

The intercepts took place across a wide swath of Ukraine, with anti-aircraft forces engaged in the regions of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Volyn, Ternopil, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Poltava, and Sumy.

Ukraine’s air defence involved a coordinated effort of fighter jets, anti-aircraft missile units, electronic warfare divisions, and mobile fire teams from both the Air Force and the broader Ukrainian Defence Forces.