Yesterday, several people wrote to me: well, you’re overly optimistic, they have “Iskanders”, North Korea is working, they’ll break our energy with them.
I’ll answer with dry numbers.
Yes, the percentage of ballistic interception directly depends on geography. If a missile flies to Kyiv, where there’s a dense “umbrella” of Patriot and SAMP/T, the interception probability approaches 80-90% (those very perks from space I wrote about). But if an “Iskander” or S-300 on a ballistic trajectory flies to Kharkiv, Dnipro, or Zaporizhzhia, where there are no or very few missile defense systems (MDS), the interception probability drops to zero or just above. On average across the country, we have about 30%.
Throughout 2025, they launched about 500 ballistic missiles at Ukraine (this statistic includes their “Iskander-M” mixed with North Korean copies KN-23). On average, that’s about 40 per month. At the beginning of last year, they fired economically — around 20-25 per month.
But at the end of the year (4th quarter of 2025), they went off the chain — almost 200 launches in three months. So they reached a rate of 60-65 ballistic missiles per month. That was their master plan — a total blackout in the cold.
Well, we consistently shot down 30%. Some hit the ground at a fortified target and did not cause critical damage, landed further away due to our electronic warfare, or simply self-destructed due to a defective missile launch.
The plan to extinguish the major energy systems of the former USSR with 30-40 reaching hits is madness. The United Energy System of Ukraine was built as the backbone of the Warsaw Pact to transfer gigawatts of power to Europe. We have more than 130 high-voltage trunk substations. To disable a system designed for World War III, it’s not enough to damage the roof of a turbine hall or destroy a cooling tower.
They need to simultaneously and irrevocably destroy dozens of open switchgear (OSG) at 750 kV and unique phase assembly autotransformers weighing 200 tons each, through which the base output from our nuclear power plants goes (and that’s 50-60% of all generation in winter). And prevent us from repairing them — targeting construction sites and production plants for months.
Now let’s calculate: ballistics come with a circular probable deviation (CPD) of tens of meters. Not on the test site but on real ground, with smoke clouds, thermal traps, camouflage nets, and radar field distortion around substations driving the optics 9E436 of the missile crazy. The image doesn’t match the standard. Of the missiles that reach, some hit administrative buildings, hit empty oil tanks, or land on concrete gabions and HESCO, which we’ve tightly placed around the nodes.
Yes, they cause damage, often massive, but energy is transferred via ring schemes. This too is a colossal, duplicated web of 22,000 kilometers of trunk lines, which cannot be brought to zero with pinpoint strikes. Their planning level is about the same as bringing Yanukovych to Kyiv in winter 2022.
Meanwhile, most cruise missiles are consistently intercepted in the air by the guys on “Mirages” and F-16s, who are continuously training, naturally with the help of air defense systems. Plus drones — yes, we couldn’t quickly deploy light motorized aviation units for their interception, as it requires huge organizational work, close cooperation with air defense, and solving the problem of targeting in the dead of night.
But the crews on Mi-24 helicopters, on transport An-28s with machine guns, on piston Yak-52s, and training L-39s are also rapidly gaining experience. And not just on how to shoot down, but how to service aircraft, repair “Miniguns,” produce NVGs and laser searchlights.
Can adversaries reach the F-16 and small aviation against “shaheds” on the vast web of jump airfields with reinforced concrete caponiers and early warning from the West about launches? No.
Can they overwhelm our air defense and aviation units with 30-40 “Iskanders,” some of which are crooked North Korean blanks, though improved? No.
Can they break our energy while we’re importing distributed generation (gas piston units, industrial diesels, and batteries) in a few months as much as a whole VVER-1000 nuclear reactor produces? No. Hit an “Iskander” at a boiler room powered by a bundle of generators.
They will break. It will be tough for us, and they will still bring much grief. But they will break. This is not excessive optimism. This is mathematics.
