2023-04-19 15:01:09
KIEV – Ukraine has received US-made Patriot missiles and hopes this will help protect it from Russian bombing during the war, Ukraine’s defense minister said on Wednesday.
“Today, our beautiful Ukrainian sky is more protected thanks to the fact that Patriot air defense systems have arrived in Ukraine,” Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in a tweet.
Ukrainian officials had previously predicted that the Patriot systems, which Washington agreed to send in October last year, would be a major boost in Ukraine’s campaign to fend off Russian invaders.
Patriots can be launched once morest aircraft, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. Russia has used these weapons to bombard Ukraine, including residential and civilian areas, especially the power grid during winter.
Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said late Tuesday that the arrival of the Patriots will be a historic event as it will allow Ukrainian forces to fire on Russian targets from further away.
Reznikov thanked the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, without disclosing how many Patriot systems had arrived or when.
The German government website listed a Patriot system among war materials sent to Ukraine last week on Tuesday, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock confirmed this to lawmakers in Berlin on Wednesday.
Reznikov said he first applied for the Patriots when he visited the United States in August 2021, five months before the Russian invasion and seven years following Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. He called it “a dream” to have such a system, but recounted that the Americans told him at the time that it would be “impossible.”
US forces have been training Ukrainian forces in the use of the Patriots, which require 90 people to operate and maintain each battery.
“Our air defenders have learned to use them as much as they can. And our partners have kept their word,” Reznikov said.
Experts, however, have warned that the effectiveness of the system is limited and that it may not turn the tide of the war, although it will strengthen Ukraine’s arsenal once morest its most numerous enemy.
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