It’s rare for a wartime leader to reveal operational details of a devastating attack, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clearly judged that the benefits outweighed the risks. Speaking on April 15, he said that Kyiv’s vital thermal power plant in Trypillia had been destroyed because “we ran out of missiles.”
“There were 11 missiles flying,” he said. “We destroyed the first seven, and the four [remaining] destroyed Trypillia. Why? Because there were zero missiles. We ran out of missiles to defend Trypillia.” The now-wrecked power plant was the largest supplier of electricity in the Kyiv region and the neighboring Zhytomyr and Cherkasy regions. Experts say Ukraine may now have lost 60% of its energy-generating capacity.
According to this author’s sources in the Ukrainian Air Force, the president’s comments “approximates to the level of disaster” the country now faces. Ukraine’s government and military are struggling to balance between reminders to its allies that we desperately need help while avoiding overly pessimistic language that might disrupt civilian morale.
But the situation is now very difficult. Ukraine’s best defense is the highly effective Patriot missile system, of which it has three and another on the way from Germany. The government says it needs at least another six such systems.
Even so, air defense officers say the Russians are making it extremely hard to actually use the Patriot’s surface-to-air missiles. The enemy constantly has unmanned reconnaissance drones (known as UAVs) in the air, which can attack or direct strikes at the system. Sometimes the Patriot batteries are so effectively pursued that they are reduced to changing location and little else.
“There is critically little air defense that can be used for short- and medium-range,” says one air defense officer. “That is why the reconnaissance UAVs of the Russians are quite free in our skies.”
The officer points to the US Vampire system, where 14 systems were reportedly on order for last year. Vampire can be fitted to the back of a pick-up truck and is said to be especially good at bringing down drones.
“The media says that we are using them, but I’ve never seen one in real life so far,” says another air defense soldier. “Even the Patriot complexes aren’t all covered by mobile air defense systems to protect them against UAVs. That is exactly why [some] Patriot launchers in Ukraine were lost. And worst of all, some of our people died – trained and experienced personnel.”
Ukraine also has an acute shortage of HIMARS artillery rockets. “Because of this, for example, we haven’t been able to hit Russian Yastreb [counter-battery] radars that we need to destroy,” says a soldier. “Yastreb is protected by Pantsir and Tor [short-range surface-to-air] systems, and these can shoot down reconnaissance drones. That means we can’t adjust fire. And hitting the radar’s defenses with HIMARS is not allowed at the moment, because that target is currently considered too ‘small.’”
Ukraine’s missile personnel understand that political developments in Washington are grindingly slow and that this prevents new supplies from arriving, but felt a terrible sadness to see the Western allies united to help Israel against the Iranian missile and drone onslaught of April 13, even though it too is outside NATO.
To most Ukrainians, this felt like being locked in a room with a monster considered too frightening to confront, while being denied the weapons even to fight it alone. Every day is critical for Ukraine. Every day is counted in lost human lives, whether those belong to experienced, hardly replaceable professionals, or little children.
There are now few missiles to stop attacks on major potential targets. For most of Ukraine, there is no protection at all as we saw on April 17 with Russia’s terror strike on civilian housing and a hospital in Chernihiv killed at least 18 and wounded 77, including children.
Yes, it looks like we may finally get American aid again as the Western world just about grasps that our men and women are defending more than just Ukraine. And everyone understands our need and our urgency.
But you have to be here in my cruelly bloodied country to understand the sheer daily grind of loss and grief and the agony of knowing that with just another four Patriot missiles, a power station that provided the warmth and light of civilization would still be functioning for three million people.
Instead, the darkness.
Lera Burlakova is a Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.) She is a Ukrainian journalist and former soldier who served as an infantrywoman from 2014-2017 after joining up following the Russian invasion of Crimea. Her war diary ‘Life P.S.’ received the UN Women in Arts award in 2021.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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