KYIV, Ukraine — Russia unleashed another missile bombardment on cities across Ukraine before dawn on Thursday, killing at least one person and hitting critical infrastructure, hours after several Russian balloons that Ukrainian officials called a distraction tactic were detected floating toward Kyiv from the north.
It was the third time in the past week that the Ukrainian Air Force had spotted the small rubber inflatable aerostats, as they are known by the military. The balloons had mostly been shot out of the sky by the time Russian ships and bombers fired dozens of cruise missiles at central and western Ukraine.
The significance of the interplay between the missiles and the balloons was not immediately clear. But as Moscow’s forces struggle to mount a renewed ground offensive, the missile strikes combined with the use of balloons showed that Russia continues to seek ways to terrorize Ukraine from the skies and outwit its air defenses.
“The occupiers somewhat changed their tactics,” Andriy Yermak, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a statement.
While the low-cost balloons are an old Russian tactic used anew, the Ukrainian military says that the most serious threat remains the powerful missiles Moscow still has at its disposal. In Thursday’s attacks, a 79-year-old woman was killed, although the national utility said the attacks appeared to have a minimal impact on Ukraine’s power grid.
For months, Russia has been directing waves of missiles at critical infrastructure and other targets across Ukraine, aiming to crush the nation’s morale. As Ukraine’s Western allies sent more sophisticated air defense systems to help Kyiv protect itself, Moscow turned to using Iranian-made attack drones. The Ukrainians have also adjusted, learning to shoot the drones out of the sky without depleting more expensive anti-missile systems.
The balloons appear to Russia’s latest adaptation, even though there seemed to be slightly less mystery about them, given the war, than around a Chinese balloon and other objects that have been detected recently drifting over North America.
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force, said that a Russian balloon in the sky above Dnipro on Sunday was the first time such a device had been detected in the yearlong war.
“The enemy tries to troll us, to distract our attention, and to make us use the resources of air defense,” he said in an interview on Thursday. Every time Ukraine spots a balloon, he said, it must decide if shooting it down poses a risk to those on the ground and is worth the expenditure of ammunition.
The problem is that the balloons can be used for multiple purposes, he said. They can carry radar reflectors meant to throw off missile defense systems, surveillance equipment to spot Ukrainian positions, even small bombs. They can also be used to try to expose the location of Ukrainian air defense systems, military analysts said.
The appearance of balloons in Ukraine’s skies comes as top government officials are stepping up warnings that Russia is preparing another large-scale missile attack to coincide with the anniversary of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24.
“They are preparing and will try to make another attempt to mount a massive attack,” Oleksii Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s national defense council, said on national television. “We have to be calm about this, and moreover, we are ready for it.”
In Thursday’s attack, Mr. Ihnat said that Russia used a variety of missiles to attack Ukraine overnight, including huge Soviet missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads.
“We don’t have the resources to shoot them down and that’s why such missiles reach their targets,” he said. “Several critical infrastructure objects were hit,” he said, including an oil processing factory in Kremenchuk in central Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky, speaking to the Norwegian Parliament on Thursday, said that about half of the 36 missiles had breached Ukraine’s missile defense system.
Mr. Ihnat said the strikes underscored the need to increase the capacity of the country’s air defense to enable it to shoot down the high-speed and ballistic missiles.
Anna Lukinova and Victoria Kim contributed reporting.
