Commander of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Mykola Oleshchuk confirmed on Saturday the shooting down of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile over Kyiv by the Patriot air defense system on May 4.
“I congratulate the Ukrainian people on a historic event! Yes, we have shot down the “unparalleled” Kinzhal,” Oleshchuk said.
Oleshchuk claims that the Kinzhal missile was launched by a MiG-31K fighter jet from Russian territory.
Defense Express was the first to report that Ukrainian troops shot down a Russian hypersonic ballistic missile using a Western-made air defense system.
According to Defense Express, Ukraine’s Armed Forces successfully intercepted a Russian Kinzhal (Kh-47) hypersonic missile at around 02:40 a.m. on May 4 over Kyiv.
the wreckage of the missile in Kyiv is identical to the fallen Kh-47 in Stavropol and is also identical to the Iskander-M that attacked Azerbaijan (the Kh-47 is an aerial version of the Iskander) pic.twitter.com/UtCFrPAM8n
— Dylan Malyasov (@DylanMalyasov) May 5, 2023
The Russian military says the Kinzhal is an ‘unstoppable’ air-launched hypersonic ballistic missile.
The Kinzhal, which means “Dagger” in Russian, missile is reported to fly at speeds of up to Mach 10, or 7672 miles per hour, and has a range of around 3,000 kilometers when launched from a modified MiG-31K fighter jet, allowing it to be used as a precision standoff weapon in Ukraine.
The Kinzhal missile was among the six new weapons unveiled by Russian president Vladimir putin during his 2018 state-of-the-nation address.