No less than six Russian balloons floated over the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Wednesday, triggering air raid sirens earlier than most of them had been shot down, Ukrainian officers mentioned, prompting hypothesis about their goal and after they had been first deployed.

“About six enemy air targets had been detected in Kyiv’s airspace,” mentioned an announcement from the Kyiv army administration, posted Wednesday on the Telegram social messaging app. “All six had been hit by air protection methods. Most of those probes had been shot down.”

The aim of the balloons stays underneath investigation, it mentioned, though given the battle there gave the impression to be barely much less thriller about them than a Chinese language balloon and different objects which have been detected lately drifting over North America.

Russia “makes use of such flying objects for reconnaissance or to confuse air protection methods,” Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman for the Ukrainian air pressure, mentioned on nationwide tv. Though the balloons are of various sizes, he mentioned, they can be utilized to dangle aloft easy, small reflectors.

The rudimentary reflectors are supposed to disorient missiles that use radar to dwelling in on their targets. Russia has used the reflectors earlier than to attempt to avert assaults on beneficial targets just like the Kerch Bridge, which connects the mainland to Crimea, nevertheless it has not beforehand hooked up them to balloons.

Russia has not commented on the accusations from Ukraine or ones from neighboring international locations that even have mentioned they detected balloons.

It was not clear if Russia only recently launched the balloons in Ukraine, or whether or not they had been beforehand thought of so unremarkable that they solely warranted consideration after the Chinese language balloon and different unidentified objects had been shot down over america in latest weeks.

On Tuesday, Mr. Ihnat reported the Russians on Sunday had used balloons over the japanese Dnipropetrovsk area. He mentioned these seemed to be full of fuel and about one to at least one and half meters in diameter — simply massive sufficient to raise the reflectors.

Along with reconnaissance and attainable distraction, Mr. Ihnat mentioned the Russians had been making an attempt to get Ukraine to expend beneficial assets, together with antiaircraft missiles, to shoot them down.

The balloons are hardly new. The Soviet army had a balloon program, which has continued underneath the Russian Federation, in keeping with Michael Kofman, a army skilled and the director of Russian research at C.N.A., a analysis institute in Arlington, Va.

Specialists in each Ukraine and america steered that the most certainly purpose for the balloons was to set off Ukrainian air protection methods. That would reveal their location so Russia may later goal the positions for assault, or may immediate Ukraine to waste ammunition.

“It will get them to expend beneficial protection ammunition on what, on the finish of the day, are balloons,” Mr. Kofman mentioned. The balloons should not terribly dependable to be used in deflecting weapons, he added.

Excessive-flying balloons that drift on air currents will be arduous to detect. Radar methods used for territorial protection are usually designed to give attention to incoming plane, missiles and different fast-moving objects. They’re typically set to keep away from selecting up issues shifting slowly, like balloons despatched aloft to assist predict climate patterns.

Elsewhere, Moldova briefly closed its airspace due to a presumed air balloon that entered its territory on Tuesday. The nation’s authorities mentioned it closed the airspace for greater than three hours to make sure the safety of passenger flights after an “object much like a climate balloon” was detected close to the Ukrainian border.

The airspace was reopened as soon as the article was discovered to be innocent, mentioned Daniel Voda, a spokesman for the Overseas Ministry. The federal government didn’t specify the destiny of the balloon.

Subsequent door, Romania briefly scrambled army jets on Tuesday additionally as a result of a balloon, The Related Press reported.