„The reentry of the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft will not be your standard reentry. The Descent Craft was designed to survive entry through the dense atmosphere of Venus. It will therefore likely survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere intact and make a crash landing (it is extremely unlikely that the parachute system will still work after more than 50 years in space). This will therefore be a high-interest reentry.“
If you shoot at something that is falling... it's still gonna fall, even if you hit it, brrak it up, etc. Whatever matter is there before will still be there after the hit, but on a less predictable trajectory.
If you break it up into pieces before it re-enters the atmosphere, you may get a higher proportion of burnup, because small chunks means lower overall ballestic coefficient per mass... But hitting stuff in orbit is difficult, and we would have a very hard time predicting the results.
„The reentry of the Kosmos 482 Descent Craft will not be your standard reentry. The Descent Craft was designed to survive entry through the dense atmosphere of Venus. It will therefore likely survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere intact and make a crash landing (it is extremely unlikely that the parachute system will still work after more than 50 years in space). This will therefore be a high-interest reentry.“