Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully defend its skies from Russian missile attacks, Zelenskyi says. Mobilization goes according to plan, but Ukraine doesn’t have enough training grounds, President Zelenskyi says. A full plan for the second peace summit to be ready in November, Zelenskyi says.
Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully defend its skies, Zelenskyi says
Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defense systems to fully defend its skies from Russian missile attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi told a news conference in Kyiv on Monday.
Zelenskyi did not say how many Patriot systems Ukraine currently possesses or expects to get soon. “I can tell you how many Patriot systems we need overall. From the standpoint of the structure of our air defenses, our military says that in order to cover all of Ukraine we need 25 Patriot systems. I cannot tell you how many of them we have or will have,” Zelenskyi said.
Foreign ministers from the G7 countries, meeting in Italy in April, pledged to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses to counter Russian attacks.
In May, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter that the Biden administration was working to send an additional Patriot air-defense battery to Ukraine.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Washington earlier this year, Zelenskyi said Ukraine urgently needs seven more Patriot batteries to fend off Russian strikes. He said he was hopeful that decisions to send these systems to Ukraine will be made at the summit.
Mobilization goes according to plan, training facilities not enough, Zelenskyi says
Efforts to mobilize more troops are going according to plan, but Ukraine doesn’t have enough training grounds, President Zelenskyi told a news conference in Kyiv on Monday.
When asked about his assessment of the mobilization campaign two months after a new draft law came into effect, Zelenskyi said: “The military says that everything is going according to their plan. As for the training grounds, there are not enough of them. As for whether they can be expanded, the expansion is already underway. As for whether [training] bases could be expanded abroad, yes, that’s one of the clauses of Ukraine’s bilateral agreement with Poland,” Zelenskyi said.
The mobilization law came into force on May 18, obliging men ages 18 to 60 to register or update their personal data at draft offices or online by the July 16 deadline. In April, President Zelenskyi, by a separate law, lowered the draft age to 25 from 27.
Last month, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not support extending the registration deadline from 60 to 150 days. Men are required to update their data by July 16.
On July 14, the Defense Ministry said that failure to update details by July 16 could result in a fine ranging from UAH 17,000 (USD 415) to UAH 25,500 (USD 622). Men subject to conscription could also be fined for not passing an assessment by a military medical commission.
Kyiv city administration reported on Monday that centers of administrative services deployed “maximum resources” to cope with the influx of men who had come to register or update their data by the July 16 deadline.
Full plan for second peace summit to be ready in November, Zelenskyi says
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on Monday he aimed to have a plan ready in November to enable Ukraine to hold a second peace summit.
“At the end of July or start of August officials from U.S.’s National Security Agency — ministers and security advisors, will meet to discuss the outcomes of the peace summit. The first meeting to shape a stance on energy security will likely be in Qatar. A plan on energy security will emerge from this meeting,” Zelenskyi told a news conference in Kyiv.
A meeting on food security and free navigation will likely be in Turkey in August. A plan will emerge from the meeting. There will be another meeting in Canada in September on war prisoners and children, Zelenskyi said.
“If those three points work out, we’ll have a complete plan ready for implementation of all points. I set a goal that in November we would have a fully ready plan,” Zelenskyi said. “I think that representatives of Russia should be at the second summit,” he added.
The Impact of Power Outages on Ukrainian Lives. Ukraine in Flames #637
The situation with energy supply in Ukraine is extremely difficult, and there is practically no hope for improvement in the coming months. While a complete blackout is not expected, energy shortages may increase, and blackout periods may become significantly longer. In the first half of 2024, Ukraine’s energy sector suffered greater losses from shelling by the Russians than in 2022-2023. By the end of June, eight major attacks on energy facilities had been carried out, resulting in losses exceeding 9 GW, which is almost half of the country’s total capacity. Watch Ukraine in Flames #637 to find out about the prospects for Ukraine’s electricity supply until the end of the year and what the government is doing to prevent a total blackout.
Guests:
- Svitlana Grynchuk, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine
- Volodymyr Omelchenko, Director of energy programs of the Razumkov Center