Ukraine’s air defence intercepted six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles fired by Russia early on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. If confirmed, the strikes would be further evidence of Ukraine’s ability to shoot down one of the most sophisticated conventional weapons in Moscow’s arsenal.

In one of the largest aerial assaults since early March, Russia also launched nine Kalibr cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea, three short-range ballistic missiles from land and a number of drones, according to the commander in chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. All the drones and missiles were shot down, the military said.

Russia’s defence ministry said that at least one Kinzhal was used in the attack, which it claimed was a “concentrated strike” involving high-precision long-range weapons that hit “all assigned targets”.

It was not immediately clear how many Russian missiles were aimed at the capital, Kyiv, which local officials said was targeted overnight with an “exceptional” blitz of missiles and drones. The skies over Kyiv lit up around 3am with thunderous explosions as air defences collided with the incoming missiles, raining debris across the city.

The statement from Ukraine’s Air Force about the Kinzhals came quickly. It did not specify whether an American-made Patriot air defence system was involved in shooting down the Russian missiles, but Ukraine until recently lacked the capability to intercept Kinzhals and had pressed allies for Patriot systems that it hoped would provide protection.

It has been unclear whether even the Patriot could intercept hypersonic missiles, which were thought by many experts to be too fast to be detected by radars in time for traditional air-defence systems to respond. But on May 4, Ukraine’s air force said it had for the first time managed to intercept a Kinzhal using a Patriot, a confirmation that took more than 24 hours.

Three senior US officials confirmed that shoot-down and said they had received information about the strike from the Ukrainian military through classified channels. One official added that US military analysts were able to verify the claim using technical means. Nevertheless, independent analysts were reluctant at the time to confirm the interception until more information was available.

Hypersonic missiles are long-range munitions capable of reaching speeds of at least Mach 5 — five times the speed of sound, or more than a mile a second.

Some Western analysts have remained sceptical about Moscow’s claims of hypersonic capacity, calling the missiles modified versions of existing conventional munitions, “new wine in old bottles”.

The aerial assault over Kyiv early on Tuesday was the eighth large-scale attack on the city this month; Ukrainian officials have said the attacks were aimed at exhausting their air defences. Tuesday’s barrage was extraordinary in the number of attacks launched at the capital over a short period of time.

New York Times News Service