Russia pounds Kharkiv, straining Ukraine’s air defenses
KYIV — Russian rockets slammed into residential buildings in Kharkiv before dawn Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, killing at least six people and injuring at least 11 more in the latest assault on Ukraine’s secondlargest city.
“Russian terror against Kharkiv continues,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a statement. “It’s crucial to strengthen the air defense for the Kharkiv region. And our partners can help us with this.”
Ukraine’s air defenses have come increasingly under strain since US military support stopped flowing into the country more than six months ago, and future assistance remains uncertain amid Republican resistance in Congress to a $60 billion aid package.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Repubican of Louisiana, has hinted that he would soon bring the issue of military aid for Ukraine to a vote in the House, but has also said that he might tie the issue to unrelated matters such as domestic energy policies, which could complicate its passage.
At the same time, Russia has replenished and expanded its stockpile of missiles, guided bombs, and attack drones and is stepping up its bombardments across the country.
Zelensky said this past week that “in March alone, Russian terrorists used over 400 missiles of various types, 600 Shahed drones, and over 3,000 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine.”
Kharkiv, second in population only to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and only about 25 miles from the Russian border, has been particularly hard hit. Russian forces tried and failed to encircle and capture the city in the first months of the war, which began in February 2022, and they were driven out of most of the Kharkiv region during Ukraine’s counteroffensive that fall.
As Russia has stepped up its aerial bombardments of Kharkiv, it has for the first time deployed powerful guided bombs to hit the city.
The use of the modified bombs represents a new and potentially deadly development against which Ukraine has little defense, Ukrainian officials and military analysts said.
There are a number of variations of the weapons, known as glide bombs, but essentially they are powerful gravity bombs modified with a set of wings and guidance systems to allow them to be dropped by fighter-bombers out of the range of Ukrainian air defense systems.
More than 20,000 buildings have been destroyed in Kharkiv since Russia launched its fullscale invasion. Ukrainian government officials estimate that it will cost more than $10 billion to rebuild everything that has been destroyed.
“Practically all critical energy infrastructure in Kharkiv is destroyed, and private infrastructure is also shattered,” Ihor Terekhov, the city’s mayor, said this past week. “More than 150,000 residents of Kharkiv are left homeless,” he added.
In the most recent overnight attack, Russia hit residential neighborhoods with a barrage of S-300 missiles, which were fired from Russian territory and can reach Kharkiv in under a minute, Ukrainian officials said.
Nine residential buildings, a kindergarten, a cafe, and a gas station were among buildings damaged, Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv military administration, said in a statement.
The attack came less than 48 hours after Russian drone strikes in Kharkiv on Thursday killed four civilians, including three emergency workers.
Despite the daily attacks and blackouts, there has been no major exodus from the city, which has a population of 1.3 million.
In recent months, Russia has leveraged air superiority to make tactical gains on the front. For instance, it has used hundreds of guided bombs to obliterate Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka before seizing the longtime stronghold in eastern Ukraine this year. Russia appears to be seeking to replicate that strategy to weaken other Ukrainian fortifications across the front.
Russia has also been working to increase the distance such bombs can fly, according to Ukrainian officials.
Guided bombs used to target Kharkiv recently — which have been identified by Ukrainian officials as air-to-surface missiles — have been designed to travel more than 55 miles, allowing Russian warplanes to launch them with relative impunity from inside Russia, Ukrainian officials said.
Once the bombs are unleashed, there is little Ukraine can do to shoot them out of the sky, so its forces are trying to find other ways to counter the threat. As part of that effort, Ukraine on Friday launched a complex drone assault targeting Russian warplanes at multiple airfields across Russia.
A senior Ukrainian security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss continuing operations, said the drone assaults had destroyed at least six military aircraft and significantly damaged eight others.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that its air defenses had intercepted more than 50 drones aimed at targets across the country and made no mention of damage to planes.
It was not possible to immediately verify the claims by either side.
However, the scale of the Ukrainian operation would be significant, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Friday night.