KYIV, Ukraine—Russia has switched its aerial strike tactics to fool Ukraine’s air defenses, using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons, a senior Ukrainian official said Thursday.
“The Russians are definitely changing tactics” as the war approaches its one-year anniversary, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The goal of the decoy missiles, Podolyak said, is to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems by offering too many targets.
“They want to overload our anti-aircraft system to get an extra chance to hit infrastructure facilities,” Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine’s air defenses are adapting to the challenge….