Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the US went to war with Iran in February.
Published On ۱۳ Aug ۲۰۲۶
Russian forces have struck Ukraine’s Izmail port in southern Odesa, setting off a fire, authorities said, a day after Kyiv pounded Russia’s Novorossiysk port.
In a statement on the Telegram app early on Thursday, the Izmail Regional State Administration said Russian forces struck “port infrastructure”, causing damage and a fire.
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It said emergency personnel were at the scene to extinguish it.
Izmail, close to the Romanian border, is home to Ukraine’s largest Danube port, handling grain and other commodities.
The attacks came as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN that the country needs ۵ percent of the United States’s Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter and ۱۰ percent to destroy all of Russia’s ballistic projectiles.
Russia has recently been firing barrages at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, roughly once a week, killing civilians and damaging or destroying homes.
In one attack, Ukraine failed to intercept any of the ۲۸ ballistic missiles launched at it.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine this year “had two and a half times less interceptors than we had in ۲۰۲۵”.
“Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before,” he said. “This year, I’m asking American partners to sell me ۵ percent of missiles [that] they have in their stocks.”
“If they sell us ۵ percent, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives,” he added. “If they can sell us ۱۰ percent, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles. I have ۱ percent.”
Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in February, diverting supplies of the advanced systems.
Ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than cruise missiles or drones because they move faster and follow steep trajectories.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s air force said it would stop publishing detailed figures on Russian ballistic missile strikes as Ukrainian forces struggle to intercept Russia’s heightened attacks.
The restrictions concern “the number of targets launched, shot down, suppressed or those that failed to reach their targets,” air force communications chief Yurii Ihnat said on Facebook. Real-time warnings would continue unchanged, he added, and the air force would keep providing generalised figures on Russian missile launches.
Last month, Russia fired more than ۴۵۰ missiles at Ukraine, nearly ۲۰۰ of them on ballistic trajectories.
Asked if the US had responded to his requests, Zelenskyy said he hopes that he gets the interceptors.
“From ۱ percent to ۵ percent, I have some months and millions [of] phone calls and anything else,” he said. “I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s out of the law. But I can’t speak about it.”
