Ukraine has an acute shortage of air defence systems (air defence). The Washington Post (WP) has reported this, citing the Ukrainian military and politicians
WP reports that Ukraine directly says that it is extremely short of air defence systems to cover all parts of the country. A captain of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), Volodymyr Klymin, who was interviewed by the newspaper’s journalists, said that bypassing the Russian air defence forces of Ukraine was possible thanks to accurate intelligence and information about the landscape. Most of the air defenses were produced back in the USSR, so today they are more than 30 years old, the newspaper said.
“Now our air defense is literally a guy with a Stinger,” said Darya Kalenyuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Center in Ukraine.
For his part, Denis Smazhny, head of training for Ukraine’s anti-aircraft missile forces, who is now abroad learning how to operate a Western NASAMS surface-to-air missile system, also said Ukraine’s air defence is outdated.
“We need to replace our old systems because very soon they will stop coping with targets. And we are also running out of missiles,” he said.