Volodymyr Zelensky asked Donald Trump to supply Kiev with more missiles for Patriot air defense systems in order to cope with the intensification of Russian attacks, according to a letter from the Ukrainian president to his American counterpart, which AFP had access to on Wednesday.
This letter is dated Tuesday, two days after a devastating attack by Moscow against Ukraine, which involved almost 600 drones, about 90 missiles, including the Oresnik medium-range ballistic missile, which may have nuclear capability and which was used for the third time by Russia since the launch of the large-scale invasion in the neighboring country, writes News.ro.
The damage from the Russian attack, one of the most massive in more than four years of war, has highlighted Kiev's reliance on its allies to defend its airspace against Russian missiles, while Moscow has warned that more massive strikes are to come.
In this letter to President Donald Trump and the US Congress, Zelenskiy asks the United States to “help” Ukraine to “obtain this vital tool of protection against Russian terror – the Patriot PAC-3 missiles and additional systems – to stop Russian ballistic missiles and other Russian missile attacks” on Ukraine.
“We understand that the US continues to take responsibility for its own defense and for the protection of its allies and partners,” Zelenskiy continued in his letter. “However, after all we've been through together, haven't we earned our place among your allies?” asks the Ukrainian leader rhetorically.
Strained relationships
Relations between the two heads of state have been difficult since Donald Trump's return to the White House.
The latter has repeated several times that he wants to end the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, but negotiation efforts under American mediation have been at a standstill since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East, which is taking up Washington's attention and resources.
“The United States (is) ready and willing to do everything in its power to facilitate the end of this war, and we hope that the opportunity will come at some point,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.
Moscow, for its part, has asked foreign diplomatic personnel to leave Kiev in anticipation of further bombings, in response, according to Russian authorities, to a Ukrainian attack that took place between Thursday night and Friday on the dormitory of a high school in Starobilsk (Starobelsk in Russian), in the Moscow-occupied Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, which left 21 dead.
Ukraine says it destroys 90% of long-range combat drones with an interception system it has developed, as well as a good number of cruise missiles. But the U.S. Patriot systems remain the only effective weapon to counter Moscow's ballistic missiles, Vladimir Putin's “last major advantage on the battlefield,” according to Zelensky's letter.
“Hard to Find” Missiles
These expensive missiles are financed by Kiev's allies through the PURL program, which “is currently the only available way to obtain Patriot interceptors,” the Ukrainian president emphasized.
A high-ranking official of the Ukrainian presidency, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also told AFP that Ukraine's supply is in a “complicated” situation.
“Right now, it's just difficult to find missiles when there are so many other orders in the Gulf and elsewhere,” he said. “And PURL deliveries have slowed as well,” he pointed out.
Zelensky said that Ukraine must “focus on a period of six months, until November”, according to the spokesman of the presidency, Dmytro Litvîn, who denied an information that appeared in The Economist, according to which the Ukrainian president would have given the order to prepare for another two to three years of war.
The war in the Middle East, in which US allies have used large quantities of anti-aircraft munitions to protect targets in the Gulf, has exacerbated a shortage Ukraine has faced since the start of the Russian invasion.
At the same time, Ukraine's success in the drone war has attracted the attention of the wealthy Gulf states, themselves targets of the same types of Iranian-designed drones used by Moscow and which Ukraine has learned to counter.
