Ukraine gets more Patriot air defence systems from Germany to counter Russian attacks

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western partners to provide more Patriot systems but production limitations and the need to maintain stockpiles have slowed their delivery.

Ukraine has received more US-made Patriot air defence systems to help it counter Russia’s daily aerial barrages, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as Russian drones killed one and injured five others in the latest overnight attack.

“More Patriots are now in Ukraine and being put into operation,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post late on Sunday.

“Of course, more systems are needed to protect key infrastructure sites and our cities across the entire territory of our state.”

He thanked Germany and its Chancellor Friedrich Merz for the systems.

The sophisticated Patriot systems are the most effective weapon against Russian missiles.

Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western partners to provide more of them, but production limitations and the need to maintain stockpiles have slowed their delivery.

Germany said three months ago it would deliver two more Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine. It agreed to the move after securing assurances that the US will prioritise the delivery of new Patriots to Germany to backfill its stocks.

Germany has given more Patriot systems from its own armed forces to Ukraine than any other country, the German Defence Ministry said on Monday.

NATO is coordinating regular deliveries of large weapons packages to Ukraine. European allies and Canada are buying much of their equipment from the United States, which has greater stocks of ready military equipment and more effective weapons.

The Trump administration is not giving any arms to Ukraine, unlike the previous Biden administration.

Russia’s relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago has killed thousands of civilians.

It has also targeted the country’s energy grid in a bid to deny civilians heat and running water in winter, as well as disrupt industrial production of Ukraine’s newly developed drones and missiles.

Russia launched 12 missiles of various types and 138 strike and decoy drones at Ukraine overnight into Monday, Ukraine’s air force said. On some nights it has fired hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine.

In Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, Russian drones hit a house where they killed a man and injured five members of his family, authorities said. Two women were also injured in a separate attack on the same region.

“The Russians cynically targeted people — deliberately, at night, while they were sleeping,” regional head Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Telegram in response to the attacks.

Russian missiles started a fire at a business in the central Dnipro region, injuring one man, regional head Vladyslav Haivanenko said.

At the same time, Ukraine has been trying to damage Russia’s oil industry, a mainstay of its economy.

Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s Saratov oil refinery overnight and started a fire, according to Ukraine’s general staff. It was Ukraine’s fourth attack on the installation in almost seven weeks.

The refinery, located some 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, can process several million metric tonnes of oil a year.

Zelenskyy claimed last week that long-range strikes on Russian refineries have reduced Moscow’s oil refining capacity by 20%./Euronews/