Missile strike on Ukraine or about the witnesses of the “truce”

Today, Russian occupiers once again launched a massive missile strike on Ukraine. The previous large-scale attack by the Russian Armed Forces took place during the night of March 7 — a month ago.

For a long time, the Russian military maintained an average pause of one and a half to two weeks between massive strikes, but this time the gap was a whole month.

The increasing pauses between strikes are due to the fact that Russia currently has virtually no unlimited stockpiles of Soviet-era missiles left — the kind it still had in 2022 and 2023 — and is now entirely dependent on the volume of its own production, both in terms of stockpiling and usage.

Nevertheless, the production volumes are quite sufficient for the Russian Armed Forces to carry out 2–3 massive combined missile strikes per month. So, what happened this time? This time, Engels happened — where, thanks to one precise strike, an entire month’s worth of Kh-101 missile production potential was destroyed. That’s why the Russian military had to postpone its terror campaign against Ukraine’s rear “until tomorrow.”

Overall, this missile strike, on the one hand, followed the classic combined scheme and differed little from previous terror operations. On the other hand, it was desynchronized. Unlike in most cases, there was no near-simultaneous entry into Ukraine’s airspace by different types of missiles with minimal timing gaps.

For example, the launches of the sea-launched 3M14 “Kalibr” cruise missiles took place around 1:30 a.m. this night, while on the night of March 7, the Kalibr SLCMs were launched around 3:00 a.m. At that same time, on March 7, around 3:00 a.m., Kh-101/555 missiles were launched from Tu-95MS bombers. In contrast, this night’s air-launched cruise missile launches occurred around 5:00 a.m., with entry into Ukrainian airspace around 5:40 a.m.

In other words, the difference between the entry of the 3M14 and Kh-101 missiles into Ukrainian airspace this night was four hours.

All missiles were intercepted around 6:20 a.m.

Meanwhile, around 5:00 a.m., multiple 9M723 ballistic missiles from the Iskander short-range ballistic missile system were launched toward Kyiv, with the launches ending around 5:10 a.m.

So, as we can see, there was no synchronization during this night’s attack by the Russian Armed Forces, and at first glance, the shelling appeared to be chaotic. But that’s not entirely true.

Once again, during this night, Ukraine was under both missile strikes and kamikaze drone attacks, with the first drone launches taking place on April 5 after 6:00 p.m. That means Ukraine was under continuous, sequential attack for more than 11 hours.

Clearly, the goal of the Russian Armed Forces was not so much a combined synchronized strike, but rather a prolonged terror campaign, with an important component of moral-psychological impact.

Earlier, the Russian Armed Forces also stretched their combined strikes over time, and for hours we could observe how cruise missiles and kamikaze drones circled, bypassing control zones where air defense systems were present. But now this is more difficult for them due to the active use of the Ukrainian Air Force, particularly the F-16 fighters, as missile hunters. Therefore, relying on maneuvers is becoming more challenging and ineffective because the longer a subsonic missile maneuvers, the higher the probability of it being intercepted by a supersonic fighter.

In any case, this night, once again, we witnessed that there was no “truce,” there is no “truce,” and there can never be one. Some “witnesses of the truce” sitting in the White House can capsuled themselves in their little world as much as they want, but the reality is much more terrifying than their green lawn with pink ponies and snow-white unicorns. The truth is the murder of children in Kryvyi Rih, the truth is the ongoing terror against the peaceful population, the truth is Putin’s unwillingness to end the war and the genocide of Ukrainians.

A fiery greeting to the “witnesses of the truce” from Ukraine, which has not slept for the fourth year.

Alexander Kovalenko