Boosted air defences can’t come soon enough for weary Ukraine
Oleksandr Ivchenko was one of the first rescue workers to arrive at the Hotel Profsoyuznaya last week after it was hit by a Russian ballistic missile at breakfast time. The fireman spent the morning digging people out of the debris of the eightfloor Soviet-era building close to the centre of Chernihiv, a northern Ukrainian city 560km from the front line.
Hours later, he was resting by his fire engine near an emergency tent where people were giving details of missing family. “All I remember is blood and glass everywhere,” he said.
“The hotel was destroyed from the eighth floor to the third. The driver of a nearby car was blown apart by the shockwave. His body was a mess.”
Fighting back tears, he wanted to show that his resolve was undimmed. “We’ll fight to the end,” he added. “Until every Russian soldier in Ukraine is dead.”
But for all the courage of Ukraine’s civilians and soldiers, the attack on Chernihiv showed how the trajectory of the war is spiralling out of their control.
As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has kept saying in recent days, a growing number of Russian missiles are hitting their targets because Ukraine is running out of the sophisticated Western-made air defence systems it needs to stop them.
At least 17 people were killed and dozens injured when three missiles landed last Wednesday in the centre of Chernihiv, which had a population of 280,000 before the war. “This would not have happened if Ukraine had received sufficient air defence equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror had been sufficient,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Why the hotel was targeted is not clear. Several Russian military bloggers claimed a high-level military delegation was meeting there. This was denied by the Ukrainians, who see the attack as part of a broader strategy of disrupting life and undermining morale.
“This year the attacks have intensified. Only this month, more than a thousand shells have fallen on the Chernihiv region, mostly near the border with Russia and Belarus,” said Vyacheslav Chaus, the regional governor, during a visit to makeshift kitchens set up for those whose homes had been damaged.
“We have had huge international support, but war has a price, and victory has a price. The price today is not money, but the lives of our people, and the sooner we get
Chernihiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus
more air defence systems, the fewer people will die.”
The assault on the city came six days after a missile attack destroyed the massive Trypilska thermal power plant south of Kyiv, which had the capacity to supply more than the capital’s entire pre-war energy needs.
Ukrainian air defences downed the first seven of the 11 missiles but were unable to stop the last four getting through, Zelenskyy told America’s Public Broadcasting Service. “Why? Because we had zero missiles ... We ran out of all missiles.”
In comments echoed across Ukraine last week, the Ukrainian leader has contrasted his country’s plight with the way the United States, as well as Britain, France and Jordan, helped Israel to intercept the 300 missiles and drones Iran fired at its territory last weekend.
Earlier this year, Ukraine was intercepting about 60% of Russian missiles. The rate has now dropped below 50%, according to a study by the Institute of the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank .
“Russian forces have not intensified the size or the regularity of their missile and drone strikes in Ukraine, but they have become more effective,” said Riley Bailey, who co-authored the report.
During the early part of this year, Russians tended to attack civilian and military infrastructure and defence facilities. Starting a month ago, however, they have concentrated on critical energy infrastructure such as the Trypilska plant.
The Russians’ success is in part because they have become better at targeting, experimenting with different combinations of types of missiles since they tried and failed to destroy the Ukrainian energy grid during the winter of 2022-23.
The nature of the airborne threat to Ukraine is essentially fourfold: ballistic missiles, such as the ground-launched Iskander 9M723 and air-launched Kinzhal Kh-47M2; cruise missiles, such as the Kh-101; drones, such as the Iranian-designed Shahed 136; and “glide bombs”, such as KAB-500s, which have been converted by the addition of wings.
Each posed a different challenge, which
“The sooner we get more air defence systems, the fewer people will die.”
could be intensified if they were combined with one another, said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.
The speed and altitude of ballistic missiles, for example, makes them difficult for most air defence systems to engage. They also play havoc with radar by dispensing small penetration devices that create false tracks. Substantial warheads and considerable momentum amplify the damage.
The need to fend off Russian strikes on civilians and on infrastructure can also divert scarce air defences away from frontline forces fighting in the east.
Top of Kyiv's wish list have been the US-made Patriot MIM-104 surface-to-air missile systems, which are the only ones shown to have been consistently able to bring down Russian ballistic weapons.
The Ukrainians are believed to have three batteries – including one used to protect Kyiv – but say they would need 25 systems, which cost more than US$1 billion (NZ$1.7b) each, to cover the entire country.
Speaking by video link to a Nato defence ministerial council on Friday, Zelenskyy urged its members to give Ukraine a minimum of seven Patriot systems, revealing that Russia had fired nearly 1200 missiles and 1500 drones at Ukraine since the start of this year.
The US Ukrainian Aid Bill includes US$2.7b (NZ$4.6b) for Patriots and offensive Himars missiles – enough to buy a “significant amount” of Patriots, even at US$4 million (NZ$6.8m) a missile, said John Hoehn, a military analyst at the Rand Corporation.
The people of Chernihiv, meanwhile, have been reflecting on the horrors of Wednesday's attack.
Inna Fesenko, director-general of the regional hospital, which is opposite the Profsoyuznaya hotel, described falling to the ground when the missiles struck. “As soon as we could get on our feet, we began to clear up,” she said. “No-one was hurt because all the patients were either in shelters or in the corridors. Four pregnant women and a mother with her newborn have been transferred to a nearby hospital.”
After two years and two months of war, Ukrainians are tired and anxious, but the speed with which they return to normal life is perhaps a key to their remarkable resilience. Cracks are beginning to show, however, as cities come under relentless nightly attacks.
Drinking tea in a cosy Kyiv cafe, Irina, a nurse and beautician turned ambulance driver, conceded that even in the capital, where people had grown used to ignoring air raid warnings, the mood was darkening. “Now that we know the air defences are running out, we are returning to the bomb shelters,” she said. – The Sunday Times