Ukraine Reports High Interception Rate Against Russian Iskander And Kinzhal Missiles.

Ukraine says Russia launched a record mixed strike on November 25 with 22 missiles and 464 attack drones aimed at critical infrastructure. The scale of the attack highlights Moscow’s winter campaign to drain Ukraine’s air defenses and pressure its power grid.

The Ukrainian Air Force announced on November 25, 2025, that Russia conducted a record combined strike against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, firing 22 missiles of several types and 464 attack drones in a single night engagement. Ukrainian air defenders reported destroying 438 drones and 14 missiles, including one of four Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles, all three Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and the majority of Kalibr and Iskander-K cruise missiles. Despite the high interception rate, impacts were recorded on energy and residential sites, particularly around Kyiv.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

Ukrainian air defense crews engage a massive Russian missile and drone barrage on November 25, 2025, a night that saw more than 450 drones and 22 missiles launched. Despite heavy impacts on energy sites, Ukraine's layered Patriot, IRIS-T, NASAMS, and electronic-warfare network achieved one of its highest interception rates of the war. Picture of a Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

This raid sits within a renewed Russian winter campaign aimed at exhausting Ukraine’s grid and air defense magazines. Earlier in November, Russian forces launched another large-scale attack involving roughly 45 missiles and 450 drones, already described by Ukrainian officials as one of the most intense barrages since 2022. The November 25 strike surpassed that in drone numbers and matched it in missiles. Some drones reportedly crossed into Moldovan and Romanian airspace, forcing NATO fighters to scramble and underlining the regional risk created by saturation tactics.

At the low end of Russia’s strike complex were hundreds of Shahed-class loitering munitions, produced in Russia as the Geran 2. The Shahed 136 is a simple delta-wing drone roughly 3.5 meters long with a small piston engine that drives it at around 140 to 185 kilometers per hour, carrying a 30 to 50 kilogram warhead over more than 1,000 kilometers. Western and Ukrainian intelligence now assess that Russia’s Yelabuga facility can produce on the order of 3,000 Geran or Shahed family drones per month, allowing Moscow to sustain weekly launch rates that at times exceed 1,100 drones. These slow but plentiful munitions are used to overwhelm radar, force Ukrainian batteries to reveal themselves, and distract operators from higher-value ballistic and cruise threats.

The most dangerous of those threats remains the Iskander and Kinzhal ballistic systems. The 9K720 Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile has a maximum range of about 500 kilometers, carries up to 700 kilograms of explosives, and maneuvers along a quasi-ballistic path with a maneuvering reentry vehicle and decoys designed to complicate interception by systems such as Patriot. The Kh 47M2 Kinzhal, an air-launched derivative carried by MiG-31 K aircraft, extends that radius to roughly 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers while carrying a 480-kilogram warhead and reportedly reaching speeds up to Mach 10 on its terminal dive. Western reporting over the past months indicates Russia has modified some ballistic missiles, adjusting trajectories and decoy packages in ways that have sharply reduced Ukrainian interception rates on many nights.

Cruise missiles added a further layer to the November 25 package. The 3M14 Kalibr land attack cruise missile, the main Russian naval strike weapon, flies at low altitude using terrain following guidance with a range between 1,500 and 2,500 kilometers and a warhead of up to 500 kilograms. The Iskander-K variant employs a similar cruise missile from a road mobile launcher. These cruise systems are designed to slip underneath radar coverage and arrive nearly simultaneously with ballistic and drone threats, creating the kind of mixed profile salvo that challenges even well-trained NATO air defense units.

Against this mix, Ukraine fields an improvised but increasingly dense defensive network. Soviet era S-300P and Buk-M1 systems still provide much of the long-range backbone, while Western-supplied batteries fill critical gaps. Patriot fire units around Kyiv and other hubs use PAC-3 hit-to-kill interceptors that can engage ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. Medium-range IRIS-T SLM systems delivered by Germany offer vertical launch, imaging infrared guided intercepts out to around 40 kilometers and altitudes up to 20 kilometers, proving particularly effective against cruise missiles and drones in cluttered urban environments. NASAMS launchers and their AMRAAM missiles cover low and medium altitudes, while Gepard self-propelled guns, French Mistral teams, and MANPADS rings defend key infrastructure against Shaheds.

Electronic warfare now forms a third pillar of this defense. Ukrainian forces deploy mobile systems such as Bukovel AD, which can detect drones at up to 100 kilometers and jam their control and navigation links within 20 kilometers by blocking GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou signals. These jammers, combined with an expanding fleet of domestically produced interceptor drones and civilian spotter networks, increasingly disrupt Shahed swarms before they reach defended zones.

The performance of this layered system on November 25 appears especially strong when judged against long-term data. A recent Royal United Services Institute analysis of missile strike records compiled by Ukrainian researcher Petro Ivaniuk and cross-checked by CSIS shows that between September 2022 and 24 October 2025, Russia fired 939 Iskander and Kinzhal ballistic or aero ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Only 227 were intercepted, an average success rate of about 24%, and in 273 of 345 recorded attacks that included these missiles, none were intercepted at all. Financial Times and other outlets have reported months when Ukrainian ballistic missile interception rates dipped into single digits as Russian upgrades took effect.

Set against that baseline, the Ukrainian Air Force's claim that all three Iskander-M missiles and one Kinzhal were downed on November 25, along with five of seven Iskander-K and five of eight Kalibr cruise missiles, stands out as a statistical outlier. Overall, Ukraine reports neutralizing 14 of 22 missiles and 438 of 464 drones, roughly two-thirds of the missile salvo and more than 90 percent of the drone swarm. Independent Russian commentary has tried to cast doubt on those figures, but in doing so has often contradicted both the Russian Ministry of Defense and itself about the use of Iskander missiles and the scale of damage, underscoring how politicized strike narratives have become.

The intercept statistics highlight how quickly Ukrainian crews have mastered complex Western systems and integrated them with Soviet hardware and homegrown EW tools. That skill is precisely why President Volodymyr Zelensky is pressing Washington for up to 25 Patriot systems under a proposed loan and replacement scheme, arguing that only a much larger inventory can give Ukraine nationwide ballistic coverage.

For NATO planners, the November 25 barrage is more than a Ukrainian success. It validates European investments such as the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative and Germany’s own plans to procure additional IRIS-T SLM batteries and other ground-based air defense systems, while offering a live fire laboratory on how to counter massed drones and mixed missile salvos. As Russia scales production of Shahed-type drones and continues to refine its ballistic arsenal, the battle over Ukraine’s skies is shaping the next generation of integrated air and missile defense concepts from Warsaw to Washington.