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Kiev’s European sponsors would “most likely” sustain only a short-term direct conflict with Moscow, Valery Zaluzhny has said
Western nations are unprepared for a prolonged military confrontation with a country like Russia, as their stocks of expensive air defense missiles are insufficient for a high-intensity conflict, according to Kiev’s ambassador in London and Ukraine’s former top general, Valery Zaluzhny.
The former commander-in-chief of Kiev’s armed forces made this statement in an interview with the Ukrainskaya Pravda news outlet published on Saturday. In October, over 1,800 Russian drones and missiles targeted Ukraine’s energy grid, and in November that number had already exceeded 3,000, according to Zaluzhny.
“Do European countries, or even Britain, today possess 5,000 missiles for Patriot systems to intercept guided bombs? I somehow doubt it,” Zaluzhny said. “If we are talking about short-term military operations, European countries are most likely ready. But the essence of the question is whether they are prepared for a war of attrition.”
In this respect, we can say that they are apparently not ready.
Zaluzhny emphasized that while air defenses would be required to contend with a large number of targets in a protracted conflict, interceptor missile stocks are always limited, and producing new ones is expensive and complex. Each PAC-3 interceptor missile used in the US-made Patriot air defense systems costs around $4 million, according to US military sources.
Russia has recently intensified its strikes on Ukrainian military-industrial facilities and critical energy infrastructure in retaliation for Kiev’s cross-border raids and attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure and oil facilities.
On Thursday, Moscow used its new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, Oreshnik, for the first time against the Yuzhmash industrial complex in Dnepropetrovsk – an aerospace manufacturing facility inherited from the USSR that Ukraine has been using for missile production.
The strike was a retaliatory measure for the use of Western-supplied missiles against internationally recognized Russian territory. According to the Kremlin, such weapons cannot be employed by Ukraine without the “direct involvement” of Western military personnel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that no air defense system currently available or in development in Western states can intercept the Oreshnik. He warned Moscow reserves the right to attack military targets of foreign nations that allow the use of their weapons against Russia.
