The biggest threat to Ukraine’s cities can strike with little or no warning.
Over the past few months, Ukraine has put Russia on the back foot with strikes that have hit Russia’s oil refining capacity, caused long lines at fuel stations and set commercial logistics centers alight. But Russia has exploited a key Ukrainian vulnerability – a dearth of ballistic-missile interceptors – to launch terrifying, high-speed missile attacks on Ukrainian cities combined with other long-range strikes that have claimed hundreds of civilian lives.
On one night alone this week, a barrage of more than two dozen ballistic and anti-ship missiles hit the Ukrainian capital region. All of the missiles slipped past Ukrainian defenses, killing least 17 people and wounding dozens more.
The massive Russian air attacks on Ukraine are complex: An attack concentrating on the Kyiv and Lviv regions on the night of June 30 saw Russia launch four anti-ship missiles, nine ballistic missiles, 61 cruise missiles and close to 300 strike drones at targets around the country, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
But Russian ballistic missiles appear to be the threat that has Ukrainian’s leadership most worried. Russia’s ballistic missile broadsides against Ukraine come as Kyiv desperately seeks to replenish its supply of US-made Patriot air-defense missile interceptors, one of the few weapons capable of knocking down a ballistic missile.
