President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine has just 10% of the number of air defence interceptors needed to handle Russian missile attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday said that Ukraine has just 10 per cent of the interceptors needed to counter Russian missile attacks.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s stockpiles of interceptors have declined year on year and that he needs only a tiny fraction of the stockpiles held by the United States.
“This year, we have two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025. Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before. Each night you have attacks, and four or five times per month we have massive attacks — terrible nights. Very heroic, very resilient people really but they [are] tired,” said Zelenskyy in an interview with CNN.
Zelenskyy further said there is no clarity over US President Donald Trump’s commitment to grant Ukraine a licence to manufacture Patriot interceptors.
Trump on July 8 said he would grant a licence to Ukraine to build Patriots, saying that “we’ll give them the right to make Patriots” and adding that “we’ll show them how to do it”. But he backtracked weeks later, saying on July 31 that “we have not agreed to that”.
“I hope that I will get it. I don’t have now 5 per cent and I don’t have such an acceptance. And this is for me is a big challenge, one of the biggest I had from the very beginning of this war,” Zelenskyy further said.
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Zelenskyy added that if the United States would “sell us 5 per cent, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10%, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles. I have 1 per cent”.
Who will blink first?
Russia and Ukraine are currently locked in a contest of endurance as both sides seek to break the other’s spirit.
While Ukraine has ramped up strikes deep inside Russia, hitting oil refineries, supply lines, and military manufacturing sites in an effort to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war, Russia has intensified missile attacks on Ukraine after realising the country is running low on interceptors. The shortage is so severe that Ukraine was unable to intercept a single missile during a Russian barrage last week and has now stopped reporting the number of missiles launched by Russia.
The United Nations (UN) reported that July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, with Russian attacks killing at least 440 people across the country.
Russia has stepped up missile barrages against Ukraine as the country has nearly run out of Patriots and is running low on other air-defence interceptor missiles as well. Russia has intensified strikes, largely targeting civilians, in a bid to break Ukraine’s morale and force it to accept President Putin’s maximalist terms.
Zelenskyy has been scrambling to secure interceptors as Russian missiles have effectively exposed a blind spot in Ukraine’s air defences. But interceptors are in short supply globally because production remains sluggish and the United States has exhausted much of its interceptor stockpile during the war with Iran.
“This is what I live each day: from 1 per cent to 5 per cent. I have some months, and million phone calls…I try to exchange something to missiles…I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s outside of the law. But I can’t speak about it,” said Zelenskyy.