Ukraine’s air defenses won’t be in a condition to repel Russian drone and missile attacks this winter due to a shortage of interceptor missiles for its NATO-provided air defenses. That’s the conclusion reached by military observers cited by British media.
Pointing to the expected dearth of US military support for Kiev amid the ongoing battle in Congress over President Biden’s proposed $61 billion aid package, analysts warned that Ukraine’s air defenses may have to resort to rationing.
“There will be some systems where they will have to ration their ammunition even more than they are at the moment,” Kiev-based defense analyst Jimmy Rushton said. “It could be a case that they have to just not engage some targets, because they don’t have enough interceptors to go around.”
“That’s obviously a horrible decision to have to make, but if you really believe that you’re running out of missiles to engage incoming targets, you’re going to have to ration them to protect the targets you believe to be most important,” the observer said.
Concerns are said to be particularly prescient in relation to the Patriot – the $1 billion Raytheon-made air defense and anti-missile system which the US sent to Kiev last spring, but which has had difficulties intercepting Russian projectiles and been targeted itself. After the Russian military’s massed missile and drone assault last Friday, an advisor to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Air Force Command conceded that Ukraine’s NATO-sourced air defenses have never actually managed to intercept even one of the estimated 300 Kh-22 series missiles Russian warplanes had launched into Ukraine since 2022.
In comments regarding the AMRAAMs’ deliveries Friday, UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps accused Russia of “testing Western resolve” in Ukraine with its campaign of precision strikes, and called on the “free world” to “come together and redouble our efforts to get Ukraine what they need to win.”
These “efforts” are presumably on top of the estimated $200 billion Western taxpayers have already spent arming Kiev and funding its government, and the $205 billion EU countries have been forced to overpay for natural gas after unilaterally cutting off Russian energy deliveries.
Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials indicated to UK media last week that Russia has spent months stockpiling missiles for winter strikes to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, undermine Kiev’s war effort and force the military to focus attention away from the front.
“We are doing everything to strengthen our air shield. But the world needs to see that we need more support and strength to stop this terror,” Zelensky chief of staff Andriy Yermak said last week, referring to Russia’s strikes last week.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has said that that unlike its Ukrainian counterpart, “the Russian Armed Forces strike only military facilities and infrastructure directly related to them.”
Kiev responded to the December 29 Russian strikes with a campaign of terror bombings, targeting Belgorod – a city of 340,000 about 40 km from Kharkov with no military targets to speak of, and Donetsk, the Donbass city which has faced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian missile, drone and artillery attacks going back to 2014.