Ukraine continues to have difficulties neutralizing Russian air attacks with missiles and drones that are increasingly effective due to Kyiv’s shortcomings in air defense and hopes for the first sale of US weaponry paid for with European money to materialize, while trying to mobilize more funds from its partners on the continent to continue receiving military material from across the Atlantic. In a press conference held the previous day in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained that the first two arms purchases from the U.S. with money from some of its European partners will be in the amount of 500 million dollars each. Kyiv has already agreed with the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Belgium, and Canada on about 2 billion dollars to buy the weapons that the U.S. has stopped sending for free since Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House. The Ukrainian president expects to obtain about $1.5 billion more in October to acquire additional military equipment from the U.S.
Kyiv finalizes the orders
Zelensky said that the Ukrainian side – which has been in permanent contact with US arms companies – is currently finalizing the first two orders, which are being shaped according to the most urgent needs of its Army. The Ukrainian president indicated that these first two packages will include, among other types of weaponry, missiles for Patriot air defense systems and ammunition for HIMARS mobile rocket launchers, two American technologies that Ukraine has been using successfully in this war. Kyiv has insisted in recent months that it needs ten additional Patriot systems, in addition to the ammunition it must receive in the first purchases paid for by its European partners to the US. According to the daily reports of the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia has launched in the last seven days against Ukrainian territory 3 Iskander-M ballistic missiles or their North Korean equivalent KN-23, a reduced number compared to other periods of the war, but which Ukraine has not managed to neutralize. Ukraine managed to intercept a large number of ballistic and hypersonic missiles launched by Russia against its territory thanks to the shield it managed to create to protect the capital and other key strategic locations, which it now wants to reinforce with more ammunition and Patriot systems. According to a diplomat from a Western European country stationed in Kyiv, as he told EFE, anti-aircraft systems such as the Hawk, the SAMPT/T or the IRIS/T – with which countries like Spain, France or Italy helped Ukraine at the beginning of the war – have ceased to be an option to increase Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, as governments have exhausted any surplus they could do without without being left without their own means of defense. The Ukrainian vulnerability in this chapter was revealed on the 7th when a cruise missile Iskander hit the headquarters of the Ukrainian government in the capital, an infrastructure that enjoys maximum protection due to its importance.European money also for drones
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Following the incursion this month of Russian drones into countries of the European Union (EU) and NATO such as Romania and Poland, Zelensky has requested more funds to redouble production and that Western neighbors of Ukraine can benefit as soon as possible from this Ukrainian invention, which is much cheaper than the missiles or fighter jets that took off from Polish and Romanian territory to face the Russian threat.
