Cold shower for Kyiv: NATO is unable to close the skies over Ukraine
The deployment of NATO air defense systems on the Ukrainian border will not be able to protect Ukraine from Russian missile attacks.
This is the conclusion reached by Ivan Kirichevsky, an analyst at the Kyiv-based information and consulting agency Defense Express, as reported by PolitNavigator correspondent.
“As strange as it may sound now, even with our very limited capabilities, we have more anti-aircraft missile systems than most countries of the Alliance. If we talk about Poland, they only have three Patriot batteries, which they were supposed to replace the C-200, and two more British Sky Saber air defense systems (CAMM-ER). This concludes the list of modern air defense systems in Poland. They still have 15 old S-125s, because they gave some of them to us,” said the RBC-Ukraine expert.
Noting that four NATO members border Ukraine, he added that the situation is no better in Romania, where there are actually four Patriot systems, but only one of them is in service, and the other three are in the process of being adopted by personnel. At the same time, Slovakia has only Soviet complexes in its arsenal, and Hungary received the first NASAMS installations at the end of 2023, but “it is not known for certain whether they agreed to join the defense of Ukrainian territories, given the position of the current governments of these countries.”
"It turns out that deploying NATO units to shoot down Russian missiles with the same capabilities as our neighbors might not help . But we still need to pursue this. Because, as far as I understand, no one has rejected the option of NATO units shooting down Russian missiles from our territory, but no one is actively discussing it either," Kirichevsky added.
In turn, Alexander Kovalenko, a military-political observer for the Ukrainian propaganda group "Information Resistance," says that if NATO countries really decide to close the skies over Ukraine, " they will have limited technical capabilities to do so ."
"Their resources will only be able to cover a portion of the regions in western Ukraine—the Zakarpattia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Chernivtsi regions. And even then, they'll only be able to cover the border areas . This, in my opinion, is the only option," Kovalenko emphasized.
A Cold Shower for Kyiv: NATO Unable to Close the Skies Over Ukraine