Ukraine’s scramble for US patriot missiles
09:59 Share

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision. Overthinking. Second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.

If you wear glasses, you know how hard it is to find the perfect pair. But step into a Warby Parker store and you'll see it doesn't have to be. Not only will you find a great selection of frames, you'll also meet helpful advisors and friendly optometrists. Yep, many Warby Parker locations also offer eye exams. So the next time you need glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, or a new prescription, you

You know where to look. To find a Warby Parker store near you or to book an eye exam, head over to warbyparker.com slash retail.

Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Laura Cook and Alex Dibble. The call between Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump last week went much more smoothly than their now infamous Oval Office meeting last month. Zelensky emphasised his gratitude and he tried hard not to antagonise Trump any further. He said,

But he still made one important plea for the US to give Ukraine more Patriot air defences. The answer, though, wasn't positive.

Positive. Trump was reluctant and with European stockpiles of Patriot systems depleted, it's left Ukraine scrambling to keep up its supply of surface-to-air missiles. Our guest today is The Times' defence correspondent George Grills. George, firstly tell us a little bit more about the Patriot. This isn't new technology that Ukraine is after but it is the most trusted, isn't it?

I think Patriot was first designed, the inventors were first looking at it in the 1970s. So it's really a Cold War piece of kit. But if you look at even the most modern weapons, so Putin boasted about developing a Kinzhal hypersonic missile, claimed it was invincible, impossible to shoot down. And yet Patriot did in fact, and has on several occasions seemingly shot it down. So

even though it's 50 years old, it stands up to even the most modern weapons. And, you know, it's not just Ukraine. I think around the world, people regard it as one of the most reliable air defense systems there is. It

It has been used in Ukraine with great success against particularly Russian ballistic missiles. So ballistic missiles follow a kind of arcing trajectory and they tend to move the quickest compared to, for example, cruise missiles, and they're the hardest to shoot down. And Patriot, which is this US system, has been pretty effective at

shooting them down. One battery costs about 800 million pounds. I mean, it goes up and down. And then if you're for one missile, to fire one missile, that costs a few million, two to three to four, something like that. It depends on the contract. But it's a pretty expensive piece of kit. The cheapest kind of weapon that Russia uses basically every night to attack Ukraine is with drones, Shahid drones. And

Quite often I've been out with them, but the Ukrainians will just use old machine guns to try and shoot them down, which is the kind of cheapest form of air defense because it's not really worth sending up a missile to take out something that's only worth, you know, maybe 30, 40,000 pounds, something like that.

So they wouldn't use Patriot on that. They probably wouldn't use Patriot on a cruise missile either because they have other air defense systems that could take that out. No, Patriot tends to be reserved for the most expensive and the most damaging of Russian ballistic missiles. And that's kind of why it's so valuable to the Ukrainians because it's kind of irreplaceable in their arsenal of air defenses in terms of, you know, what could they use to actually parry the Russian ballistic missile attacks. It's Patriot, basically.

When we're talking about ballistic missiles, George, what will Russia be targeting when they use them? Or I suppose, in other words, what is Ukraine trying to defend whenever it uses a Patriot?

Well, bear in mind, these ballistic missiles also cost millions and millions of pounds. They tend to be used to kind of hit, or they have been in the past couple of years, to try and hit energy infrastructure, or if there's a particularly valuable kind of military target, that's what the Russians would tend to go after with a ballistic missile. And the Ukrainians, I mean, Patriot is portable, so it's basically on the

back of a truck. And so the Ukrainians shuttle them around the country.

on the basis of where they think the Russians are going to attack next. And so, yeah, they try and position them. They try and get ahead of those Russian attacks by positioning them in the right place. But, I mean, it's a pretty safe bet. There will usually be one in Kiev, at least one in Kiev, one in maybe Odessa, which is their main port to protect the port infrastructure. So they're really protecting the most strategic sites in Ukraine.

It's estimated that Zelensky is thought to have six Patriot launchers left. The cost of one missile is around £3 million. So they're fired sparingly, as you've said. And despite a better conversation following that public falling out in the White House, Trump was reluctant to give any more Patriots from the US stockpile. What's behind this reluctance?

So this was the kind of kiosk. So we had our first phone call between Zelensky and Trump since that infamous now blow up row in the Oval Office. And during that call, according to the US readout, Zelensky specifically raised air defenses and Patriot and said, basically, can we have a few more? And he's been asking this for a long while because basically,

If you compare, for example, Israel, Israel is a small country. So it's it's they have very, very good air defenses, but they're able to do that because they have a pretty small territory to defend, whereas Ukraine is massive. And so it's pretty tricky to to have coverage of everywhere. So Zelensky was basically asking for more batteries of Patriot air defenses to be able to cover more of the country.

And Trump seemed to basically say, no, it's up to Europe to do that. And what he's saying is that there are European countries that have patriot systems themselves. Why don't they give them to Ukraine? And the truth is some already have, you know, Germany, Romania, Holland. These are countries that have already given systems to Ukraine. The problem is that...

Europe's kind of anti-ballistic missile defenses are looking pretty threadbare now. And so European countries are pretty reluctant to hand over any more, given that they also have a threat from Russia. And talking specifically about the UK, where I'm sitting right now, the UK has no land-based anti-ballistic missile defenses.

missile air defences, so it can't even protect itself. If, as you've just said, Britain doesn't have any land-based anti-ballistic missile defences, is that a problem? I mean, are we naive in thinking that, you know, missiles flying over Europe at all still seems quite remote, even at the moment?

I don't know about that. I think if you look at the way in which, for example, Iran has attacked Israel with ballistic missiles, if you look at the way that the Houthis, who are basically a small group in an impoverished country, they've got ballistic missiles and they're launching them thousands of miles. We are in an era of proliferating ballistic missile attacks. And

If you think that Europe, oh, well, we're further away from Yemen where the Houthis have been firing ballistic missiles at Israel, for example. Well, actually, there are broken countries that are much nearer to us. I think, for example, of Libya, where if...

some sort of terror group were to get hold of a ballistic missile in the same way the Houthis have from the Iranians, suddenly you quite possibly are in range. And the whole of British and, well, wider European, but particularly British strategy has been, we would only come under ballistic missile attack from Russia, and that would lead to a nuclear attack

and we have Trident, and Trident is an effective deterrent against that. So they wouldn't dare fire a ballistic missile because it would lead to nuclear war. The problem is that if you've got groups like the Houthis, who are kind of basically jihadis with little skin in the game, why wouldn't they fire one? Because to be honest, I'm not sure a nuclear deterrent works against a group like that.

So going back to Ukraine, if the US refused to donate any more Patriot batteries to Ukraine, and Europe did the same, the priority for Zelensky would be to keep up the supply of other air defence missiles and to make sure no more Patriot launchers are hit in Russian attacks. If he did lose more Patriots, to what extent would that swing the air war in Russia's favour? It would have a massive effect. I mean, throughout the war, the Russians have

have not been able to get air dominance over Ukraine. You know, they haven't been able to fly fighter jets over Kiev and just drop bombs on it. They have to fire missiles from basically Russian territory or from further away, which gives air defenses the possibility to shoot them down. But, you know, if Ukraine was deprived of Patriot and if their air defense system that they've built up started to kind of be chipped away,

then, you know, you start to get escalating kind of Russian ability to kind of project their aircraft into Ukraine. And it's a real, real problem. George, thank you. That's The Times' defence correspondent, George Grylls. Another thing that Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky discussed, although it's become slightly cloudier since...

is Ukraine's nuclear power plants and whether the US could take over the running of them. We analysed that proposal last Thursday with Hamish de Breton-Gordon, the former commanding officer of NATO's nuclear defence forces. Do listen back. That is it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

Oh.

Requires upfront payment, taxes and fees extra, terms and exclusions apply. Visit BoostMobile.com for full offer terms and sweeps details. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost. Their designer quality frames start at $95, including prescription lenses, plus scratch-resistant, smudge-resistant, and anti-reflective coatings, and UV protection, and free adjustments for life.

To find your next pair of glasses, sunglasses, or contact lenses, or to find the Warby Parker store nearest you, head over to warbyparker.com. That's warbyparker.com.