After the joy about the attack on the Russian Crimean Bridge, Ukraine suddenly woke up Monday morning in the harsh reality of the war. Russian missiles hit 12 cities, including western cities like Kyiv and Lviv for the first time in months. Both vital infrastructure and civilian targets were hit. At least ten people were killed and dozens were injured.
The Russian attacks, from sea, from the air and from the ground, show that Ukraine remains vulnerable from the air in recent weeks on the battlefield. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, 84 cruise missiles and 24 drones were involved, 13 of which were kamikazedrones. The anti-aircraft defenses are said to have defused 43 missiles and 13 drones. But almost half of them hit the target, including in Kyiv, the best-protected city in Ukraine.
Yet it is not the case that the Ukrainian air defense has failed, says Peter Wijninga, military expert at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS). ‘Air defence, no matter how good, is never one hundred percent watertight. And if you don’t have enough resources to protect your entire country, like Ukraine, you have to make hard choices. That means: defend especially those objects that are essential to the war effort. And it’s not a residential area. You try to protect them as well as possible with an air raid siren, so that citizens can get to the air raid shelters in time.’
Fast planes and cruise missiles
Despite the shortage of anti-aircraft systems, Ukraine has received a lot of equipment in recent months, Wijninga says, including shoulder-fired portable missiles (Stinger and Igla) and larger defense systems against fast aircraft and cruise missiles, such as the Russian S-300 and the German Gepard. , a radar-guided tracked artillery piece of which Ukraine has now received 24.
President Zelensky nevertheless immediately asked for more anti-aircraft systems and other weapons in telephone conversations with French President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz on Monday. Germany, as temporary chairman of the G7, will convene a meeting of the major western industrialized countries on Tuesday to discuss a response to the Russian missile attacks. And on Wednesday there is a meeting of NATO defense ministers, about, among other things, strengthening the Ukrainian air defense.
Some western countries already took an advance on this on Monday. For example, the Lithuanian president said Ukraine needs more heavy weapons and called on the Czech Foreign Ministry to lift all restrictions on arms supplies. German defense minister Christine Lamprecht said Germany will supply an anti-aircraft defense system to the Ukrainian army within days.
Combination with tracking radar
This is the first of a total of four Iris-T systems, promised in June by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the most modern anti-aircraft defenses available in Germany. This allows planes, helicopters, missiles and drones to be shot down from the sky up to 40 kilometers away. In combination with a tracking radar, the Ukrainian army must then be able to defend a large city such as Kharkiv.
The US has also promised anti-aircraft defense systems before. In late September, the Pentagon said they should be there within two months. Presumably, the Nasams (Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) from the American Raytheon and the Norwegian Kongsberg is a fast and simple surface-to-air missile defense system, which uses missiles similar to those launched from aircraft.
Delivery of the Patriot air defense system coveted by Kyiv is out of the question, Wijninga thinks. ‘That is a very advanced medium-range system, but very expensive and complex to operate. Moreover, it is primarily a system against ballistic missiles, and these were cruise missiles fired from the sea or from aircraft.’ And the question is how much of that the Russians have left. “They shot a lot of them. And they can’t make new ones, because they need Western guidance software for that.’