Ukraine lacks air defense: Russian attack wreaks havoc on energy network

Due to a Ukrainian shortage of Western air defenses, Russia managed to wreak havoc again. In Lviv province, three rockets hit electricity infrastructure and a gas storage facility. In other places, three power stations were seriously hit. “Another extremely difficult night for the Ukrainian energy sector,” said power supplier Dtek.

Ukraine has been asking the West for months for additional air defenses so that it can repel the attacks. But despite a call from NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg to urgently send anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, member states have made few commitments in recent weeks. Only Germany promised to send a Patriot system. Spain did promise Patriot missiles, but no system to shoot them.

Countries are concerned that their own air defenses will be weakened by giving air defense systems to Ukraine. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on Tuesday that he is “open” to discussion about the delivery of a Patriot system, but wants a replacement system. The Netherlands, which has three Patriots plus one in reserve, has not made any commitments.

Painful choices

Due to the lack of anti-aircraft systems, Ukraine has to make painful choices about which regions will and will not be defended. On Wednesday it succeeded in shooting the missiles and drones out of the sky in the capital Kiev. But Russian projectiles did hit the provinces of Zaporizhia, Poltava, Lviv and Vinnytsia during the two-hour attack.

Russia hit not only infrastructure of the Ukrainian energy grid on Wednesday. A fire station, a park, a tram, a garage complex and fourteen houses were also damaged.

The airstrike took place on the day Ukraine commemorates the fight against Nazi Germany. “Today, Ukrainians stand up again against evil,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday in a video from a basement in which the Russian army locked up more than 300 people for a month. As in 1945, Zelensky said, “only a united free world” can prevent “the new evil from spreading throughout the European continent and ultimately throughout the world.”