I. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me about today’s strike on the Moscow Oil Refinery is ...

I. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me about today’s strike on the Moscow Oil Refinery is the number of misses by Russian air defense against Ukrainian UAVs.

In this compilation, I deliberately cut together Pantsir misses. The compilation is not complete, there is much more footage, but this is all that fits into one post.

For the first time, we saw in real time how Russian air defense operates during large-scale raids. And I have no rational explanations for why it is THIS BAD.

The most concise description came from Yan Matveev:

"They placed air defense right in the city, the missiles fly chaotically all over the place and miss, and the threat from them is no less (if not greater) than from the drones."

But that still does not answer the question of "why is it like this?"

These are UAVs flying at low speed, after all. They are not cruise missiles, much less ballistic missiles.

This can hardly be called a combined strike overloading air defense; the only fast-flying targets here were perhaps Bars jet UAVs, but there were very few of them.

This is nowhere near comparable to the overloading of Ukrainian air defense during Russian combined strikes. And yet, even repelling such a strike creates chaos and confusion for Russian air defense.

A separate conclusion has to be drawn that Pantsirs handle UAVs so-so.

Now it is clear why there is such a shortage of missiles for the Pantsir: because sometimes even two missiles are not enough to shoot down slow Ukrainian UAVs.

This is documented in videos 1 and 2: two Pantsir misses at a single UAV, which ultimately hits the target.

In video 3, a Pantsir misses the first UAV, misses the second one, and only the third missile brings down the second UAV.

Reaction of a disappointed eyewitness:

"Oh, air defense! (Missed). Air defense works like shit, fuck. Oh, another one! Oh, air defense! (Missed). That air defense is fucking blasting past the target, fuck!"

In videos 4-5, there are single Pantsir misses.

In video 6, we see the commotion caused by a Pantsir missile flying over the Sadovod market.

In video 7, a UAV damaged by a Pantsir directly hits the Sadovod pavilions.

In video 8, another downed UAV apparently hits the premises of the Avtospetskomplekt store.

In video 9, a Pantsir hits a UAV but does not even bring it down (maybe it only changes its trajectory a little).

And video 10 shows how all this happens right in the middle of the road.

Now it is clear that half of the hits on civilian objects on Russian territory are the result of air defense work.

And no, this does not mean Russian air defense shot down nothing at all, ah, if only that really were the case... No, I think the interception rate is fairly high.

And nevertheless, Pantsirs with mobile groups cannot effectively protect Moscow from Ukrainian UAVs. And all of this is accompanied by enormous collateral damage to civilian objects from Russian air defense.