What Russia is looking for with the dramatic increase in missile and drone attacks against Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to increase attacks on Ukraine, and now Kyiv is realizing what he meant.

This Tuesday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia had launched 500 missiles and drones against Ukraine in just five days.

At least 32 people were killed in the Ukrainian capital in that period, 30 of them in a single attack: on December 29, when Russia launched one of the largest airstrikes on record in this war.

And it's not just in the capital. Almost 60 people were killed across the country: Kharkiv in the northeast, Zaporizhzhia in the south, Odessa on the southern coast, and even Lviv in the far west were attacked.

Since launching its invasion, Russia has not stopped attacking Ukraine by air, but this latest series of attacks marks a deadly escalation.

What does this new phase of the war mean for Ukraine? And what is the plan behind Russia's new air assault?

Change of tactics

Ukraine had not suffered such intense attacks since the beginning of Russia's large-scale invasion.

And what has changed is not only the magnitude of the attacks, but also the tactics.

The January 2 attack lasted six hours in Kyiv. The Russians launched a wave of drones against the capital. The Ukrainian air force claimed they were able to shoot down all of them, 35 in total.

But then missile attacks of different types followed, in an attempt to overwhelm and break the city's defenses.

Missiles reached the heart of Kyiv in the last five days, for the first time in months.

“They are always trying to find a better way to break our air defense systems and make their attack more efficient,” Oleksandr Musiyenko of Ukraine's Military Legal Research Center told the BBC.

That means they use different types of missiles – hypersonic, cruise and ballistic – but also that these missiles are fired via different routes. These weapons can change direction in the air, which creates more headaches for air defense.

Russia is also changing its objective. On December 29, she turned her guns on cities across the country; on January 2, only to Kyiv and Kharkiv.

“The Russians tried to concentrate their attack power… and target only one or two cities,” Musiyenko said.

The way Russia prepares these attacks is also changing. Ukraine's intelligence service, the SBU, reported Tuesday that it had found and disabled “two robotic online surveillance cameras” that it claims were hacked by Russia to spy on Kyiv's defenses and scout targets.

It is unclear how much longer Russia will be able to continue carrying out these large-scale attacks.

Analysis by Ukrainian media suggests that the December 29 attack cost US$1,273 million, while the January 2 attack cost US$620 million, according to Forbes magazine.

Ukraine had feared since before the winter that Russia was stockpiling weapons for large-scale attacks.

An analysis published in Le Monde quotes Ukrainian officials as saying that Russia still has about 1,000 ballistic or cruise missiles in its arsenals, and is capable of manufacturing about 100 more a month.

The Ukrainian defense

Musiyenko says Ukraine has also been preparing.

Ukraine uses German-made Gepard anti-aircraft guns to counter drones, while Soviet-era Buk systems are used against cruise missiles and American-made Patriots against Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.

“We divide our systems for different types of threats,” says Musiyenko, although of course this means relying on the West for ammunition and maintenance. “So of course it is very important for us to receive this support.”

This is a key point now for Kyiv.

With US aid bogged down in political infighting and the EU unable to produce even half of the million artillery shells it promised by the end of 2023, Russia could well be launching these vast strikes at a time when supplies from Ukraine could be exhausting

*Additional reporting by Anastasiia Levchenko and Hanna Chornous

Click to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.

Remember that you can receive our notifications. Download the latest version of the app and activate them so you don't miss our best content.