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A Russian missile strike over the weekend at an apartment complex in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro exposed a weakness in Ukraine’s air defenses, just as many fear more brutal Russian attacks are on the horizon.
The Dnipro strike killed 45 people, including six children, and injured another 79 people in one of the most devastating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population since Moscow’s invasion nearly a year ago.
Russia has targeted critical infrastructure and energy grids in Ukraine with strikes since October, hoping to cow the Ukrainian people into submission after facing numerous setbacks in the war.
In the Dnipro strike, however, Ukraine says it was completely unable to stop the missile that hit the apartment complex because it lacked the defense capabilities to intercept it.
The deadly incident, just days after the Kremlin’s appointment of a new commander to oversee the war, is leading to concerns that a more desperate Russia will increasingly carry out such strikes and Ukraine will struggle to defend against them.
Gian Gentile, the associate director of the nonprofit Rand Corporation’s Arroyoa Center, predicted Russia will keep up the strikes as it prepares to launch a potential ground offensive in coming months.
Gentile said he could not speak with finality on Russian intent, but he believes Moscow is “at the point now where they are intentionally killing civilians” to turn them against the government.
“They may be moderating between going after infrastructure and power nodes” and civilian areas, he added. ”But they are following a playbook that lots of other countries have taken in war — and that is to punish the civilian population.”
After the strike, a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow does not target residential areas and falsely attributed blame for the attack on Ukrainian air defenses, according to the Kyiv Post.
