Ukraine's air war tightens as launchers empty and strikes cross borders
Ukraine's Patriot interceptors are effectively exhausted as reciprocal drone strikes keep killing civilians. Confirmation that British-made drones hit targets in Russia prompted Moscow to threaten consequences for London, widening the conflict's diplomatic reach.
Geopolitics··Midday
Patriot launchers stand empty: 1 per cent in hand
CNN, the first news organisation given access to a Patriot launcher on Ukrainian soil, reported that Ukraine has effectively run out of interceptors. The chief engineer of the system in Ukraine said he had not seen a Patriot launcher fire for 6 weeks. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country needs 5 per cent of the US stockpile to get through the winter and currently has 1 per cent. According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, coalition forces used an average of 225 interceptors a day in the first 4 days of the war with Iran, while Lockheed Martin made 620 interceptors in 2025, or 1.7 a day. In January the Pentagon signed a seven-year deal with Lockheed Martin to reach 2,000 a year by 2030. A White House official said no decisions had been made and no guarantees given over production in Ukraine.[2]
Reciprocal strikes: 9 killed in Russia, 4 in Ukraine
Local officials said Ukrainian strikes on Russia killed 9 people and injured 23, including a child, over 24 hours, with 8 of the deaths in the Belgorod region and 1 in Astrakhan, BBC News reported. Belgorod's acting governor Alexandr Shuvaev said a building burned and a car was damaged in the village of Koloskovo; Astrakhan governor Igor Babushkin said a drone had targeted an industrial facility that was not damaged. On the Ukrainian side, Russian drone attacks killed 2 people in the Sumy region and 2 in the Donetsk-region cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk; 54 trading pavilions burned at a market in Sloviansk, and in Odesa a civilian vessel was damaged and 4 people injured. BBC News notes the figures come from each side's own officials and are not independently verified.[3]
British-made drones and Moscow's warning to London
British-made drones were confirmed used in strikes on targets inside Russia; Russia's embassy in London accused the UK of "deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis" and said London's actions would inevitably carry consequences for which it would have to answer, BBC News reported. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told BBC News that Britain stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Ukraine, and a military source confirmed to BBC News that UK drones had been used in the attacks, with reported economic damage of more than 35 billion pounds. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said drones carrying UK components and configurations had struck Russian territory, including a fuel depot in the Kamensky District of the Rostov region.[1]
