Zelenskyy unveils plan to close skies over Ukraine
Photo: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Vitalii Nosach, RBC-Ukraine)
Ukraine is working on a comprehensive plan to close its airspace to modern missiles and drones. The plan includes multi-layered protection using Patriot and Sky Shield systems and interceptor drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"We’ve been talking about closing the sky since day one of this war. We understand that it’s our vulnerability," Zelenskyy says.
He explains that Ukrainians understood that Vladimir Putin had a lot of missiles, while Ukraine had very few air defense systems and very few Soviet-made missiles left over from the Soviet era.
"These systems were no shield at all. Nevertheless, we built the air‑defense we could, and we continue to develop it," he says.
Zelenskyy notes that during the war, Ukrainian specialists have gained important experience in cooperation with partners, in particular the United Kingdom and France, which transferred their air defense systems.
In return, they highly value the knowledge that Ukraine has provided about the effectiveness of the systems in real combat conditions. Thanks to this, all the transferred systems have become much more effective and adapted to modern warfare against various types of missiles and drones.
Today, according to Zelenskyy, closing the sky involves multi-layered protection, which includes modern aircraft and interceptor drones. Ukrainian companies are already producing such drones, in particular as part of a joint project with Britain - the OCTOPUS drone will become part of the Sky Shield system.
In addition, Ukraine plans to order 25 Patriot systems from the US. Due to long production times and the limited availability of certain components in the contract, the country is counting on the help of its European partners, who will temporarily provide their systems and take them back once the American devices arrive.
Such measures will significantly increase the effectiveness of Ukraine's air defense and reduce its vulnerability to missile and drone attacks.
Ukraine wants to order 27 Patriot air defense systems from the United States to protect Ukrainian airspace from threats.
At the same time, as Zelenskyy notes, while these systems are being manufactured in the US, European countries could lend Ukraine their Patriots.
On October 25, during a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing, Zelenskyy called on European partners to provide Ukraine with Patriot air defense systems.
According to him, Kyiv would return them immediately after receiving the ordered air defense batteries from the US.
