The New York Times spoke to Volodymyr, a Ukrainian soldier who works with the Patriot system. According to him, these Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) have already helped save thousands of Ukrainian civilian lives.
Patriot turned out to be extremely effective in hands of Ukrainian military
According to Volodymyr, on 11 December 2023, at 4 a.m., their radar detected a strange anomaly.
As it turned out later, it was a Russian ballistic missile flying towards Kyiv.
As our military did not have time to raise the alarm, they decided to launch several US Patriot missiles.
The enemy target was successfully destroyed.
Taking into account that ballistic missiles cause the greatest losses, I think the number of lives saved during the war is in the thousands, Volodymyr notes.
According to Volodymyr, when they managed to shoot down a Russian ballistic missile on 4 May, everyone was very surprised, because for a long time there was a widespread myth that Russian ballistic missiles could not be shot down.
In May and June, in some of the most sophisticated attacks ever conducted using drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles, two batteries of Ukrainian Patriots shot down all 34 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at Kyiv, according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
What problems can occur with Patriot
Despite all these advantages of the US air defence system, it is important to understand that the US government will soon be unable to maintain Ukraine's Patriot batteries with interceptor missiles, which can cost $2-4 million each.
Volodymyr also said that the complex has to be constantly moved from place to place so that the enemy never finds out where the installation is located.
We managed to create a shield over the country thanks to our foreign partners. But if our foreign partners turn their backs on us, we will return to the beginning of the war, when people simply did not come out of their shelters and the Russians tried to turn our cities into ruins, warns Volodymyr.
