Video Shows Russian Cruise Missile Blasted Out of Sky Near Kyiv

A video shared on social media purportedly shows Ukrainian forces hitting a Russian cruise missile, amid claims from Kyiv that it had successfully intercepted the majority of rockets that Moscow fired at Ukraine on Friday.
“Shooting down a cruise missile over Kyiv region,” tweeted Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko on Saturday, next to a video of a mid-air explosion in which shouts of approval can be heard by those filming the incident. Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.
The clip was tweeted after a barrage of Russian rockets targeted Ukraine’s infrastructure, which Ukrainian authorities said had mostly been intercepted. The Kyiv City Military Administration said on Friday that Ukrainian forces had destroyed 37 of 40 missiles that had targeted the capital.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhny said that air defenses had shot down 60 out of 76 Russian missiles. Among them were 72 cruise missiles of the (Khinzhal) Kh-101, Kh-22 and Kalibr types. Four Kh-59 and Kh-31P were also fired, he added.
Ukrainian officials have said that nine energy infrastructure facilities and some residential buildings had been struck in the oblasts of Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. They also said that Russian forces had launched most of their missiles from the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Engels airfield in Russia’s Saratov Oblast.
The Institute for the Study of War said on Friday that while the Russian strikes pose a significant threat to Ukrainian civilians they are not helping Russian forces conduct offensive operations.
Key to Russia’s barrage on Ukrainian infrastructure is the contribution of Iranian-supplied drones. However, on Saturday, the British Ministry of Defense said that Russia had stopped sending in drones from Crimea out of concern that it could leave the peninsula it annexed in 2014 vulnerable.
On Saturday, air raid sirens were reported across Ukraine, including Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv and Volyn, according to Ukrainian news outlet Ukrinform.
Shooting down a cruise missile over Kyiv region pic.twitter.com/lcnRI4urA5 — Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 17, 2022
Also on Saturday, Ukrainian military commander Maj Gen Andrii Kovalchuk, raised the prospect that Vladimir Putin might use the first anniversary of his full-scale invasion to mount significant attacks.
He told Sky News that he could “foresee” that Russian forces may try to invade Ukraine from the north, the east and the south on February 24 and that “we are preparing for it. We live with the thought that they will attack again.”
He also told the British outlet about the possibility that Russian troops might again invade via Belarus on Ukraine’s northern border to target the capital “at the end of February, maybe later.”