Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mykola Oleshchuk said that on the night of May 4, a Russian hypersonic missile "Dagger" was shot down in the sky over the Kiev region for the first time. He noted that the downed missile "has no analogues" and congratulated the Ukrainian people on the historic event.
Oleshchuk did not write exactly how the missile was shot down, but left the name of the Patriot complex next to the ? emoji. These complexes in the PAC-3 modification are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
“It happened during the night attack on May 4 in the sky of the Kiev region. The Kh-47 missile was launched by the MiG-31K from the territory of Russia. There is no need to run, as they say in Ukraine: across the father into hell, in advance to publish information that the enemy can use! We will definitely report: what, where, what, and when they shot down! Everything has its time".
The Russian side has not yet commented on this information.
In August last year, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the Kinzhal missile "was used three times during the "special operation" and" showed its brilliant characteristics three times," "which no other similar missile in the world has." He argued that the "Dagger" could not be "neither detected nor intercepted."
The Military Informant Telegram channel previously compared a photo of the warhead of a missile that fell in Kiev on the night of May 4, and photos of the warhead of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile that fell due to a technical malfunction in September 2022 in the Stavropol Territory. The authors noted that the similarity is extremely high.
The report notes that the principle of operation of the "Dagger" is to fly to its target at hypersonic speed. The missile then slows down and "reaches the target at a much lower speed for correction and maneuvering." Outdated Soviet air defense systems are not capable of shooting down the Kinzhal, in most cases such a target can only be hit with the help of the Patriot PAC-3 air defense system with the PAC-3 MSE kinetic interceptor, the channel noted.
On the eve of The Insider, in a summary of the main events at the front, he noted that the Ukrainians for the first time managed to shoot down a Russian hypersonic missile. Journalists from the Defense Express publication received photos of the wreckage of the rocket from sources and determined that on May 4 at 2:40 am, a Kh-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missile was shot down in the Kiev region. Defense Express recalled that the Kiev city military administration on May 4 for the first time reported the downing of missiles "probably of a ballistic type." Ukraine also recently received Patriot systems, which, in the PAC-3 modification, are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
However, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine denied the statement about the downing of the "Dagger" over Kiev, after which they canceled the press conference and advised them to contact the authors of the Defense Express publication and the Kiev city military administration for comments. Ukraine Weapons Tracker suggested that the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not want to disclose their ability to defeat the latest Russian missiles.