Former US army commander in Europe Ben Hodges has responded to Kiev’s requests for deliveries of air defence (air defence) systems during a conversation with Ukrainian presidential office adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, admitting that NATO now simply has nothing to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU)
A senior US military official has admitted that the air defence systems available in the arsenal of Western countries are currently unable to “cover” even Europe, not to mention Ukraine.
“We do not have enough air defence assets to protect Europe. Only one battalion of Patriots [American MIM-104 Patriot SAMs] for the whole of Europe. <…> The West is now looking for other systems that can help [Ukraine], because this is now a matter of prime necessity. But in this case, we simply don’t have anything we can pass on,” Hodges admitted.
Earlier, Reuters quoted US officials as saying that US authorities were considering sending to Ukraine obsolete MIM-23 Hawk medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, which were adopted by the US army in 1960.