Ukraine needs five percent of the United States’ Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter and 10 percent to destroy all of Russia’s ballistic projectiles, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on Thursday.
Russia has recently been firing mass barrages at the Ukrainian capital Kyiv roughly once a week, killing civilians and damaging or destroying homes.
In one attack, Ukraine failed to intercept any of the 28 ballistic missiles launched at it. Speaking to an international media, Zelensky said Ukraine this year “had 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,” he said in English.
“This year, I’m asking American partners to sell me five percent of missiles (that) they have in their stocks. If they sell us five percent, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives. If they can sell us 10 percent, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles.”
Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, diverting supplies of the advanced systems.
Ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than cruise missiles or drones because they move faster and follow steep trajectories. Asked if the United States had responded to his requests, Zelensky said, “The answer is, for today is next. I have one percent.”
“From one percent to five percent, I have some months and millions (of) phone calls and anything else. I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s out of the law. But I can’t speak about it.”
Ukraine’s air force said on Wednesday it would stop publishing detailed figures on Russian ballistic missile strikes. The restrictions will concern “the number of targets launched, shot down, suppressed or those that failed to reach their targets”, communications chief Yuriy Ignat said on Facebook.
Real-time warnings would continue unchanged, and the air force would keep providing generalized figures on Russian missile launches, he said. Last month, Russia fired more than 450 missiles at Ukraine, nearly 200 of them on ballistic trajectories. (AFP)
