Ukraine says it used Patriot system to down a Russian hypersonic missile
To Russia's war now, and Ukraine says it used the US made Patriot air defense system to intercept a Russian hypersonic missile. Yeah, this is the first time the newly acquired system has been used to take down one of Moscow's most modern missiles. CNN Sam Kiley, joining us now live from Kyiv, Sam, I mean this sounds pretty significant, like a big win for Ukraine. A really big win or an act of exceptional marksmanship using a very sophisticated piece of weaponry or luck. And I think that the developers of the Patriot missile systems, and in particular the United States and the Pentagon, will be looking at this incident in detail to try to establish which of those three things it was. Because this is a missile system, an anti-missile missile system that was developed to take out missiles that predate the hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal that the Russians have been using occasionally in Ukraine. This is a missile that the Russians claim can fly at ten times the speed of sound in technical terms too fast for the Patriot.
But the Ukrainians are saying that they did successfully shoot one down. Now they're very short indeed of the Patriot missile systems. They say they're very short indeed of all forms of aerial defenses. So this has been a major morale booster for the Ukrainians. And it also represents from the Russian perspective a bit of a slap in the face in that they did assume that these Kinzhal missiles, although they don't have a large numbers of them, were pretty invulnerable. Now they will have to take extra precautions to protect those missiles that they have been firing into this country. And they fire them at a time when they try to overwhelm the systems here with other missiles and drones from the very primitive Iranian-made Shahid drones all the way through to the Russian-made cruise missile systems.
They fire swarms of these things and then on top of them fire these hypersonic missiles. So it is a significant step for the Ukrainians, but we don't really know the technical detail, whether or not it was basically a lucky shot. Yeah, still some questions there. Sam, what do you know about Russian officials evacuating civilians in the Zaporizh region? This is the head of an expected counter-offensive. The UN's nuclear watchdog says they're closely monitoring. What do you know? Well, Victor, we know from, at least we know that there are claims of these evacuations circulating on social media and being made by the exiled Ukrainian leadership, particularly of the town of Militipol, which is a very important town to the south of Zaporizhia, the town of Zaporizhia, which is still in Ukrainian hands, and the Zaporizhia nuclear power station, which is in Russian hands. Essentially, Militipol has been a bit of a hotbed of partisan activity on social media.
There has been images of very large queues of vehicles leaving the city. There have also been reports coming from even Russian officials of other towns being evacuated closer to the front lines in anticipation of a Ukrainian offensive along that very long front line there in the. that essentially runs east-west from Zaporizhia all the way through to north of Mariopol, which of course was flattened by the Russians when they captured it last year. This is seen as preparations being made by the civilian and Russian authorities in the south of the country that they've captured at the beginning of this war, ahead of a Russian, sorry, a Ukrainian offensive in the summer. The assumption is that they will be attacking in the south, but of course the Ukrainians are also being trained by NATO in manoeuvre warfare, and faints and fake attacks will be very much part of any future offensive that they do conduct. All right, Sam Kiley, appreciate your reporting as always. Thank you.
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