KIEV, UKRAINE (AP) – Ukraine’s defense minister said on Wednesday that Ukraine had received a US-made Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system. war.
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov tweeted: “Our beautiful Ukrainian skies will be safer today as the Patriot air defense system arrived in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have previously said the arrival of the Patriot system, which Washington agreed to deploy last October, would be a major boost and milestone in the fight against Moscow’s all-out invasion.
The Patriot can target aircraft, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. Russia used these weapons to bomb Ukraine, including residential areas and civilian infrastructure, especially power supplies in winter. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Inat said late Tuesday that the delivery of the system would mark a milestone that would allow Ukraine to eliminate Russian targets at greater distances.
Reznikov thanked the people in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands without saying when the system was delivered or how many were delivered.
A German government website on Tuesday listed the Patriot program among military supplies shipped to Ukraine over the past week, which German Foreign Minister Annalena Beerbock confirmed to lawmakers in Berlin.
Reznikov said he first asked questions about the Patriot system during a visit to the United States in August 2021, seven years after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea. He described owning the system as a “dream” but said he was told at the time that it was “impossible” in the United States.
Ukrainians are trained for the Patriot Battery, which requires up to 90 soldiers to operate and maintain.
“Our air defense forces have mastered (the Patriot system) as best they can, and our partners have kept their promises,” Reznikov wrote.
Experts warn that while the system will have limited effectiveness and expand Ukraine’s arsenal against a larger enemy, it may not be able to turn the tide of the war. The Patriot was first used in the United States in the 1980s. Analysts say the system costs about $4 million per round, and the launchers about $10 million each. At such prices, there is no merit in using Patriots to shoot down the much smaller and cheaper Iranian drones purchased by Russia and deployed in Ukraine.
Kiev officials report daily that there have been no civilian casualties from Russian bombing, but no military casualties.
At least four civilians were killed and 27 wounded in Ukraine on Tuesday and night, according to the press agency of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. A 50-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman were killed in a Russian airstrike in a border town in northeastern Kharkiv, provincial governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a televised address.
Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian forces had launched 12 rocket, artillery, mortar, tank and drone attacks on the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, killing the market and central Kherson, the region’s eponymous capital. He said he killed a civilian at a nearby school.
A woman has been killed and another injured in northern Ukraine after Russian forces fired multiple rocket launchers in the border village of Lichki, the local military government said. The Russian military has also launched drones that explode at night in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine.
