New stage in war with Russia and risk of year-end attacks - military expert Zgurets

He shared his opinions with Espreso TV.

"Since September, Russia has been accumulating a stockpile of cruise missiles. Usually, cruise missiles are shot down quite effectively by modern air defense systems, and the question here is how much this enemy strategy - depletion using a significant number of Shaheds - has affected Ukrainian air defense stockpiles in previous periods," the expert explains.

At the same time, Zgurets emphasized that anti-aircraft missile systems are not usually used to fight the Shaheds, but they are used when there is a threat to critical infrastructure.

As for whether the Russian army will launch attack at Ukraine in the last days of the year, he said: "The enemy will try, I think, to continue such attacks. We will be able to determine how massive and combined they will be only in the future, but we understand that Russia has accumulated stocks of those Kh-101 cruise missiles, if we talk about the average rate of production of 40 Kh-101 missiles per month, then starting from September, when the previous massive attacks were carried out, the enemy has accumulated a little bit of these missiles, which it can use for launches from Tu-95 bombers."

According to him, over the past three months at least, Ukrainian defenders have received powerful air defense systems and missiles.

"I think that the potential of air defense has increased during this time, and now we are entering a new stage of the battle with Russia, which will use its means of destruction for energy terror and for attempts to strike at Ukrainian military facilities," Zgurets added.

• On the night of December 29, Russia launched several groups of Shaheds that attacked Ukraine, and in the morning the terrorists launched missiles.