Russia is testing Ukraine’s defenses with a rarely-used missile. Here’s what you need to know

CNN
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Russia’s overnight missile attack on Thursday showered Ukraine with an array of missiles, in one of Moscow’s biggest aerial assaults for months.

Nearly half a million people are without power in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, following the latest barrage of strikes, according to the regional governor.

And there are concerns about how effectively Ukraine can stand up to such bombardments.

“They’re sending a very strong signal to everyone in Ukraine, and to perhaps some of our refugees outside of Ukraine, that life is very far from returning to normal despite the fact that over recent weeks there was more quiet,” Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to Zelensky, told CNN.

But aerial strikes like these are not going to win Russia the war, Western experts say.

“There is a long history of nations trying to win wars through strategic bombardment, to break the will or capacity of an opposing state to resist,” Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for airpower and technology at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, told CNN. “It has an incredibly poor record of success.”

Russia’s limited stockpiles mean it’s unlikely they will force a major breakthrough in the war through the skies, so long as its air force is unable to gain supremacy above Ukraine.

Here’s what you need to know about Russia’s latest missile attacks, and what they mean for the conflict.

Russia launched a total of 95 missiles of various types over the past day, 34 of which were intercepted, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a morning update on Friday, as well as a number of Iranian-made Shahed drones.

That array included cruise missiles that were launched from both the sea and the air; six different kinds were used in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Much attention has been focused on the six launches of Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, which are especially difficult to stop.

The powerful weapon has rarely been seen over the country’s skies. Its first known use in Ukraine was last March and occasionally used since, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)….