Ukraine’s Patriot Defenses at Work: Shuddering Booms and Bursts of Light

The first warning was a blip, a small anomaly picked up by radar scanning the skies over Ukraine. Within seconds, it became clear that the blip was a Russian ballistic missile streaking in Kyiv’s direction at several times the speed of sound.

It was just before 4 a.m. on Dec. 11, and there was no time to sound air-raid alarms in the country’s capital. While millions of civilians slept, Ukrainian forces fired off several U.S.-supplied Patriot missiles as the deadly battle in the sky commenced.

Missile-on-missile battles like this play out in a matter of minutes, said a Ukrainian major, Volodymyr, commander of a Patriot air-defense battery who insisted that only his first name be used because of the sensitivity of his unit’s operations.

From a mobile control room near Kyiv, his team tracked the salvo of incoming Russian missiles as the Patriot’s algorithms calculated their speed, altitude and intended course. With shuddering booms and bursts of light, its interceptor missiles knocked down one Russian missile after another.

“Given that the Patriot is one of the few systems that can effectively shoot down ballistic missiles, and ballistic missiles cause the most casualties, I think the number of lives saved during the war is in the thousands,” Volodymyr said.

That night was a success, but more recent missile barrages have done more damage as Russia steps up its assaults, searching for new combinations of weapons and trajectories to evade Ukrainian defenses. Those attacks have underscored even more acutely Ukraine’s urgent need for air defense.

On Dec. 29, Russia fired more than 120 missiles at cities across Ukraine, killing at least 44 people, including 30 in Kyiv. On New Year’s Eve, Ukraine’s forces said they had shot down 87 of 90 drones aimed at targets around the country. And on Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian military, Russia fired at least 99 missiles and 35 drones at Kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people and injuring dozens.

“There is no reason to believe that the enemy will stop here,” Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, said on social media after Tuesday’s attack. “Therefore, we need more systems and munitions for them.”

But White House and Pentagon officials have warned that the United States will soon be unable to keep Ukraine’s Patriot batteries supplied with interceptor missiles, which can cost $2 million to $4 million apiece.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .