Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition and military equipment resulting from the US and its allies’ struggle to resupply the country’s military is having an increasingly dire effect on the battlefield, US and NATO officials are warning, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv’s dwindling air defenses knowing that they likely won’t be replenished anytime soon.
The Ukrainian military is “experiencing shortages in air defense munitions, mostly in the medium to long range,” a NATO official said on Wednesday. “It’s not just that we know that. It’s that Russia knows that. So Russia is using drones and missiles in ways that are really explicitly designed to deplete Ukrainian air defense systems.”
Ukraine has been rationing its air defenses for about a month now, said another person familiar with western intelligence. The Ukrainians had limited systems to start with, including the US and German-provided Patriot systems around Kyiv, some S-200 and S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, and some older, retrofitted Soviet launchers that they have been using to fire western missiles like Sidewinders, this person said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the battlefield situation for Ukraine “difficult” and “serious” on Thursday. He said that NATO foreign ministers who met this week in Brussels agreed to check their countries’ inventories to see if they have any additional air defense systems, particularly Patriots, that they can share with Ukraine.
But Ukraine is running out of munitions for their air defense systems quickly, and the US will not be able to resupply them until the administration secures supplemental funding from Congress. Last fall, the administration asked Congress for more than $60 billion in additional funds to help support Ukraine, but more than 6 months later the funding has not…
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