{"id":7141,"date":"2026-07-08T09:34:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7141\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:34:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:34:48","slug":"please-help-us-zelenskyy-presses-nato-for-air-defense-aid-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7141\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Please help us\u2019: Zelenskyy presses NATO for air defense aid \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/russia-latest-massive-attack-kills-13-injures-over-80-in-kyiv\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Recent Russian barrages<\/a> have underscored the vulnerability: Ukraine has maintained high interception rates against drones and cruise missiles, but ballistic missiles remain far harder to stop without sufficient Patriot stocks.<\/p>\n<p>Zelenskyy told defense executives and NATO leaders that Ukraine had built the world\u2019s most advanced drone warfare capability, and said its forces now eliminate tens of thousands of Russian troops each month, overwhelmingly through drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He also pointed to Ukraine\u2019s naval drones in the Black Sea and long-range strikes deep inside Russia as proof that Kyiv\u2019s defense industry had transformed under wartime pressure.<\/p>\n<p>But Ukraine still needs its allies to move faster on ballistic missile defense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe one thing we still need to do here in Europe is build a strong defense against Russian ballistic missiles,\u201d Zelenskyy said. \u201cThis is Russia\u2019s last major advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He praised the Patriot system as \u201cexcellent,\u201d but said current production is nowhere near enough to meet demand. Zelenskyy said Ukraine had discussed Patriot production licenses with Washington and urged European governments and industry to back the effort.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEurope needs its own effective anti-ballistic systems and missiles,\u201d he said. \u201cThis cannot wait until 2030 or beyond. Europe needs affordable, mass-produced, anti-ballistic systems as soon as possible. In fact, today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent Russian barrages have underscored the vulnerability: Ukraine has maintained high interception rates against drones and cruise missiles,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[460,60,13,2942,462,7,210,20,71,49,438,222],"class_list":["post-7141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-air-defense","tag-defense","tag-drones","tag-industry","tag-missiles","tag-nato","tag-nato-summit","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}