Ukraine‘s defense minister announced Wednesday that the country has received US-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile systems, which Kyiv hopes will help protect it against Russian assaults during the war.
“Today, our beautiful Ukrainian sky becomes more secure because Patriot air defense systems have arrived in Ukraine,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a tweet.
Ukrainian officials earlier stated that the delivery of Patriot systems, which Washington agreed to send in October, would be a significant help and a watershed moment in the fight against Moscow’s full-fledged invasion.
The Patriot is capable of intercepting airplanes, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. Russia has utilized this weaponry to assault Ukraine, including residential areas and civilian infrastructure, particularly electricity supplies during the winter.
Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said late Tuesday that the system’s delivery will be a watershed moment, allowing Ukrainians to hit Russian targets from a longer range.
Reznikov congratulated the people of the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, but did not specify how many systems had been delivered or when they would be delivered.
On Tuesday, Germany’s federal government website named a Patriot system as one of the military supplies transferred to Ukraine in the previous week, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock confirmed it to legislators in Berlin on Wednesday.
Reznikov stated that he first requested Patriot systems in August 2021, five months before the full-scale invasion by Kremlin soldiers and seven years after Russia unjustly stole Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. He characterized owning the system as a “dream,” but he was informed in the United States at the time that it was “impossible.”
Ukrainian personnel have been trained to run and maintain the Patriot battery, which can require up to 90 troops to operate and maintain.
“Our air defenders have mastered (the Patriot systems) as far as they could. And our partners have kept their word,” Reznikov wrote.
Experts have warned that the system’s usefulness is limited, and that it may not be a game changer in the war, although adding to Ukraine’s arsenal against its larger adversary.
The Patriot was originally used by the United States in the 1980s. According to analysts, the system costs about $4 million per round and the launchers cost nearly $10 million each. It is not economically effective to employ the Patriot to shoot down the significantly smaller and less expensive Iranian drones that Russia has been buying and using in Ukraine.
Daily civilian casualties from Russian bombardment have been acknowledged by Kyiv government, but not military casualties.
At least four civilians were killed and 27 others were injured in Ukraine on Tuesday and overnight, according to the defense ministry’s press office.
In televised remarks, the governor of the northeastern Kharkiv area, Oleh Syniehubov, claimed a 50-year-old male and a 44-year-old woman were killed in a Russian bombing on a border village.
Russian forces launched 12 rocket, artillery, mortar, tank, and drone assaults on Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, according to its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, killing one civilian in a market in the district’s namesake capital, Kherson, and a nearby school.
According to the local military administration, a woman was murdered, and another was injured in northern Ukraine after Russian forces shelled the border village of Richki with multiple rocket launchers.
Russian military also launched explosive drones into Ukraine’s southern Odesa area at night.
