The US government is set to halt all open orders for Patriot air defence systems and interceptor missiles until Ukraine has enough to defend itself from Russia’s air attacks.
Three people with knowledge of the decision said the move would be announced on Thursday, after President Joe Biden said last week in Italy that he had secured commitments for the delivery of additional air defence systems to Ukraine. These would include Patriot missile batteries for which Kyiv has been clamouring after Russia escalated missile and drone attacks on its power plants.
Biden said five countries had agreed to send Patriot and other air defence systems to Ukraine, and that other countries expecting the delivery of the US systems would have to wait because “everything we have is going to go to Ukraine until their needs are met”.
Standing beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two signed a 10-year defence pact on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Puglia, Biden added that Kyiv would begin receiving more systems “relatively quickly”.
The US announcement on Thursday will codify Biden’s commitment to Kyiv and ensure that Ukraine gets the Patriot systems it needs to protect its cities and critical infrastructure, two of the people with knowledge of the decision told the Financial Times.
Poland, Romania and Germany are among the European nations with open orders for Patriot systems. Spain also has an open order for Patriot launchers, while a coalition of Nato states in January placed an order for 1,000 Patriot missiles.
Spain, Greece and Romania have Patriots in their arsenals, but have so far declined to authorise transfers of launch systems to Ukraine. Poland has said its Patriots are protecting the infrastructure used to ship western weaponry across its border into Ukraine, and thus are already deployed to help protect the war-torn country.
In addition, Italy said this month it would send Kyiv a second SAMP/T air defence system, a European-made alternative to the Patriot.
US and Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The US-made Patriot systems are Washington’s most advanced air defence weapons. They consist of a radar system and mobile launchers that can fire interceptor missiles at incoming projectiles or aircraft.
Zelenskyy has called them “the most effective air defence system in the world today” and said they were capable of shooting down all Russian missiles, including ballistic ones. He said in April that “to protect Ukraine completely, in the future, Ukraine would need 25 Patriot systems with six to eight batteries each”.
He and foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba have since told Nato allies that Ukraine needs a minimum of seven Patriot systems to effectively cover the country’s airspace.
Ukraine has at least four Patriot systems at present, provided by the US and Germany. Since Zelenskyy made a plea for additional deliveries this spring, Germany has said it would send an additional battery, and the Netherlands announced an initiative to send another based on components supplied by multiple countries. Biden then approved the deployment of another Patriot air defence system to Ukraine last week.
The Patriot systems and their interceptor missiles have helped protect key government buildings and critical infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities across the country.
In at least one instance, a Patriot missile downed a Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft over the Sea of Azov in January, according to two Ukrainian officials with knowledge of the operation and Colonel Rosanna Clemente, assistant chief of staff at the US 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, speaking on a panel this month.
Clemente said Kyiv had “probably about a battalion of Patriots operating in Ukraine right now . . . being used to protect static sites and critical national infrastructure”.
Russia has knocked out or captured more than half of Ukraine’s power generation, causing the worst rolling blackouts since its full-scale invasion in 2022. Moscow’s latest wave of missile and drone attacks has targeted Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, including thermal and hydroelectric power plants, which are much harder and more expensive to fix, rebuild or replace.
“Addressing the ammunition shortfalls and coverage gaps in Ukraine’s air defence is essential for the country to defend critical infrastructure, and no less important than stabilising the front line,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Russian strikes have significantly damaged Ukraine’s non-nuclear power generation capacity, and Russian drones are increasingly able to target Ukrainian positions behind the front lines because of a lack of air defence coverage.”
Speaking in Berlin on June 11, Zelenskyy said that “Ukraine is now suffering from the most destructive form of Russia’s vision of energy as a weapon”.
Russian and drone attacks had destroyed more than nine gigawatts of Ukraine’s power generation capacity in recent months, said Zelenskyy, adding that peak energy consumption in Ukraine last winter was 18GW. “So, half of it does not exist any more.”
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said this month that the consequences of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector were “long-term” and that saving power “will be part of our daily life in the years to come”.
This week Serhiy Kovalenko chief executive of electricity provider Yasno, warned Ukrainians that they faced a realistic possibility of having electricity for just six to seven hours per day next winter.
Additional reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Henry Foy in Brussels
