Ukraine’s NATO envoy calls for more air defense donations
KYIV — Ukraine needs more air defenses, but allies are starting to doubt if they can help Kyiv withstand the growing scale of Russian attacks, Alyona Getmanchuk, Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, told POLITICO on Friday.
“Their logic is straightforward: can we truly be effective against this level of terror when Ukraine’s most pressing need is Patriot interceptors, and we do not have enough of them, as stockpiles have been depleted and production rates remain insufficient?” Getmanchuk said in a written statement.
She said Kyiv’s allies should see that helping Ukraine is also in their interest.
“We need to stop viewing assistance that enables Ukraine to defend itself as purely a matter of supporting Ukraine. It is also in NATO’s own interest … the more drones and missiles Ukraine can destroy in its own airspace, the fewer will cross the borders of neighboring NATO countries,” the envoy added.
Getmanchuk underlined that Western countries still have stocks of interceptor missiles to donate, including missiles close to the end of their service lives.
“There is hardly a better way to decommission them than by using them in the Ukrainian sky,” Getmanchuk said.
Kyiv is proposing a workaround: allies hand over interceptors from their existing stocks now, and Ukraine replaces them later with missiles it has already ordered.
“It’s a swap — not a donation. What we need is to get through this winter,” Getmanchuk said.
Ukraine is placing substantial orders, using both partner funding and the EU’s €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan. These contracts cover not only hundreds of Patriot interceptors — both PAC-2s and PAC-3s — but also European systems, including SAMP/T and Aster 30 missiles, IRIS-T and others.
Growing numbers of Russian ballistic missiles are passing through due to Ukraine’s shortage of interceptors. Kyiv also needs other air defenses to intercept Russia’s jet-powered drones.
“Our short list of urgent air-defense needs therefore consists of three major categories, not one: Patriot interceptors, air-to-air missiles, and all types of MANPADS and missiles for them,” she said.
In addition to direct donations, Getmanchuk called on countries to boost their funding to the NATO-led PURL program, in which allies buy U.S. weapons to give to Ukraine. NATO says PURL now supplies 90% of Ukraine’s Patriot interceptors.
The ambassador underlined that helping Ukraine now will also save allies money once the war is over.
“The more we can protect today, the less we will have to rebuild tomorrow,” she said.
