According to the military, the Defense Forces have various means to shoot down aerial threats.
On the night of February 7, the Ukrainian Defense Forces could not count on manned aircraft due to bad weather during a massive Russian attack. Because of this, the Ukrainian military used other means to shoot down enemy targets. The head of the Communications Directorate of the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuriy Ignat spoke about this on the air of the channel “Kiev24”.
“We see difficult weather conditions. This is the primary factor why it is difficult to shoot down, because such visibility is poor. Snow is bad weather. Accordingly, we could not count sufficiently on manned aircraft, in particular F-16, Mirage aircraft, which act very effectively in defense during cruise missile attacks,” he noted.
According to Ignat, Ukrainian troops shot down 24 missiles with anti-aircraft missile systems while repelling the attack.
The serviceman added that the Defense Forces have various methods to shoot down airborne threats, namely mobile fire teams, electronic warfare systems and the so-called small air defense. However, it is not always possible to find a complex or unit at the right time and in the right place. In addition, according to Ignat, all this is affected by the weather.
He emphasized that good weather is also necessary for the operation of interceptor drones, which “shoot down even more (UAVs) than mobile fire groups.”
“They also need weather. They see with their eyes. The camera, be it the eyes of the pilot or the eyes of artificial intelligence, he must see the target. If we have fog, low clouds and poor visibility, that is, non-flying weather, then the result from them will be much less, sometimes even equal [нулю]”, Ignat explained.
The head of the Communications Directorate of the Armed Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine added that “now people are reacting quite painfully” to the arrivals. He noted that compared to other years, the occupiers have increased their ballistic strikes, which can only be shot down by American Patriot systems.
You also need to have enough “Petriots” in different cities, and the ballistic range is 25 kilometers. It is very difficult to cover the entire territory of our state,” the military man emphasized.
Russia is also increasing the number of UAVs.
“If earlier we had air defense with Soviet missiles – Buk, S-300 and others – now we rely almost exclusively on Western models of equipment and Western missiles. That is, our air defense has become smaller in quantity (given that Soviet models have been exhausted), and there are more drones. Therefore, perhaps earlier there were higher indicators,” Ignat summed up.
Russian attack on February 7 – what is known
Earlier, the Air Force revealed details of the Russian attack on February 7. According to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russians used more than 447 air, land and sea-based drones and missiles. The main directions of attack were the western regions – Lviv region, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Rivne region, Vinnytsia region.
In particular, it became known that the Russian army shelled the Rivne, Khmelnytsky and Lvov regions. As a result, two people were injured in the Rivne region. At the same time, a man born in 1971 was injured in the Khmelnitsky region.
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date:2026-02-08 12:44:00