I spoke to a Lt. Colonel in Ukraine’s air defence command, who revealed several new facts. First, Kyiv was on the brink of evacuation in Dec due to the intensity of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure. Patriot missiles helped save the city, but are now running out.
“You can’t plan a war with annual production of 160 Patriot missiles. We fired those in a month,” he said. “If we wait until autumn [to increase supply] they will hit energy infrastructure again. This is a certainty. This winter will be even more difficult than the previous one.”
Second, the UK has supplied Ukraine with a new air defence system: Supacat trucks rigged by British engineers to fire cheaper ASRAAM missiles. Effective against Shahed drones, but also Russian attack helicopters near the front line. Kyiv loves them, and needs more.
Third, UK Storm Shadow missiles are so effective the Kremlin has launched a ballistic missile campaign against the jets that launch and their airfields. To defend against ballistics, Ukraine needs more Patriots, and is asking for 40 old PAC-2 systems in US storage.
Fourth, after suspected Ukrainian drone strikes on Kremlin, Putin retaliated by launching “unstoppable” hypersonic ballistic missile at Zelensky’s presidential administration. Kyiv’s Patriots shot it down, and defeated massed ballistic and hypersonic strikes since without loss.
Fifth: “Kyiv now has the most powerful air defence system in the world. throughout history,” the colonel said, claiming 215 Russian missile and drone intercepts over Kyiv in May and June alone. “It’s Patriots, it’s Nasams, it’s German Iris, S-300, it’s French Crotale.” BUT…
They don’t have enough missiles, and Western officials have told them their air defence is “too expensive”. He complained politicians count coins over lives and fail to consider the cost of storing, maintaining and disposing of mothballed systems that could be given to Ukraine.
“They’ve already been paid for by the grandmothers of current US citizens. You either have them sitting around rotting away or you give them to us, we’ll use them somehow,” he added.
“Yes, there’s a huge price to fighting Russia, a country with a military budget greater than our state budget. We’re willing to pay it with our lives. If anyone thinks money is more important than our lives, please say so. Don’t make promises and then give us the bare minimum.”
He also revealed lack of missiles was stalling the counteroffensive, which badly needs US ATACMS and air superiority to succeed. Read the full piece here:
How US Patriot defences are reducing ‘unstoppable’ Russian missiles to shrapnel
In Kharkiv for @thetimes, I encountered an astonishing act of heroism by ‘Drago’ (L), a 24 yr-old special forces officer in Ukraine’s Kraken Detachment. He was awarded a medal for valour for extraordinary actions while holding the Russians for 16 hours at the village of Krasne…
Elite Russian Spetznaz had crept into his unit’s rear, he told me: “You could see how professionally and well co-ordinated they were working; it was high-level stuff. They had the latest-model Kalashnikovs and night-vision devices. They covered their movement by accurate fire.”
Drago was recovering from concussion and second-degree burns at Kraken headquarters in the bombed-out city of Kharkiv as he described his encounter with Russia’s feared special forces.
The past week I was in Vovchansk, Lyptsi and Kharkiv for @thetimes during Putin's new assault on a city once home to 1.5 million people. I witnessed some incredible heroism by its Ukrainian defenders. First, in a foxhole with the 'Peaky Blinders' as they killed 40 Russian troops-
The foxhole is only 10ft wide and 4ft deep, scant cover for the Ukrainian special forces team when death comes straight at them. Russian jets incoming!” shouts Anton, who was a businessman before the war. Five men pile on top of one another.
The shelter smells of wet soil tinged with sweat, and severed tree roots jab at the bodies pressed against them, tearing unprotected skin. The ground shakes one, two, three, as huge long-range glide bombs impact.
I had the privilege to interview @ZelenskaUA in Kyiv for @thetimes and our @Channel4 documentary @C4Dispatches: The Hunt for Ukraine's Stolen Children, out tomorrow night. Fantastically directed by @paulkenyonTV, it exposes how the Russians abduct children as young as three...
...to 'reprogram' them as 'Russian patriots', while older boys are put in uniform, then trained as soldiers to fight their own country in Vladimir Putin's senseless war on Ukraine.
At first it was individual children being seized and taken from their families, Zelenska says during our meeting in a secure room deep in the bowels of Ukraine’s presidential administration. Then entire schools, hospital wings and orphanages were emptied by the Russians.
I caught up Shaman battalion, an Ukrainian special forces unit, who revealed they had been crossing the Russian border to strike airbases and kill the Kremlin’s senior army commanders.
“We have an increased number of targets, missions on specific people or targets, such as buildings where a general or somebody like that is located inside Russia,” said “Intelligent”, 30, a sergeant involved in planning the missions.
Shaman would not name their targets. But other sources provide clues. In June, Colonel Vladimir Kuznetsov, commander of the 1009th motorised rifle regiment, was ambushed and killed in the Belgorod region while driving a service vehicle alone.
I joined the Ares battalion of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army as they and the 35th Marine Brigade assaulted and then liberated Staromaiorske. It was a bruising, infantry on infantry battle after artillery had pounded the village.
The only good use for western vehicles on these narrow streets was to drop off troops and collect casualties. Stay any longer and they are vulnerable to anti-tank weapons. In previous villages the Russians had been hunkered down in building that were levelled...
But this time the Russians dug trenches in gardens, vegetable patches and animal enclosures and waited until the Ukrainians were upon them to open fire. “They let us approach as close as 20 metres before shooting,” UVA soldier Oleh tells me. “They got smarter after Neskuchne."
A much beloved Ukrainian comedian, @serhiyprytula, has been revolutionising the way Ukraine fights the Kremlin, buying its first military satellite and kamikaze drones with a range of 1000km+ that can strike into the heart of Russia. I spoke to him about it: (Thread)
His crowdfunding campaigns hit their targets almost instantly. He visited the UK twice in the past year to buy 101 infantry fighting vehicles for £5.5 million, the largest purchase on record of armour by a member of the public.
When he raised $20 million to buy three Bayraktar drones last year in a single day, the manufacturer was so impressed they gifted them for free. He asked the Ukrainian Ministry what he should do with the money. They asked him to buy a satellite...