Kyiv, Ukraine
Ukraine is short of missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system, making it more vulnerable to Russian ballistic missile attacks, a source familiar with the matter told CNN on Thursday.
The abrupt development comes amid an increasingly bitter public feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. In recent days, the White House reached a widely criticized deal to import Russian diesel and has put increasing pressure on Ukraine to end its strikes on Russian oil infrastructure.
Zelensky said he felt betrayed by Trump’s deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has since announced that Ukraine would continue to strike Russian refineries.
For months, Zelensky has repeatedly warned that Ukraine is running out of U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles, which are one of the few defensive weapons capable of shooting down a ballistic missile.
But these interceptors are both expensive and globally rare, as other countries have burned through their stockpiles or sought to bolster their own defense systems amid the Iran war.
The source told CNN that “almost all ballistic missiles in the latest strike were not intercepted due to the lack of (interceptor) missiles.”
Russian ballistic missiles hit three power plants in kyiv and targeted energy infrastructure in Kharkiv in this attack on Wednesday morning. That day, four people were killed and 25 others injured in kyiv.
This is likely not the first time Ukraine has run out of Patriot interceptors, and Zelensky has publicly expressed his constant struggle to obtain more stockpiles.
In mid-August, CNN became the first media outlet to gain access to a Patriot system on Ukrainian territory, and at the time Ukrainian officials revealed that the country was virtually out of interceptors.
Zelensky told CNN in August that his days were spent making “millions” of phone calls with allies, working to strike deals for more Patriots. At the time, he said Ukraine had only a tenth of the interceptor missiles it urgently needed.
A month later, Ukraine’s president took a more optimistic tone, saying the country would “receive a license from the United States to manufacture Patriot missiles.” But US President Donald Trump ultimately refused to say whether he agreed with this, and no license was ever obtained.
Tensions between Zelensky and Trump flared in recent days as Washington demanded kyiv stop its strikes on Russian oil facilities, even as Moscow continued to hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Zelensky told the Financial Times in a fiery interview that he could only agree to stop energy strikes against Russia if he received more Patriot interceptors at a “minimum.” He added that “when he called for more air defense, the US response was to weaken the Starlink service.”
In a public statement Wednesday, he again pleaded for more stockpiles, saying, “The U.S. president has all the effective and necessary tools to bring peace through force, justice and pressure on the aggressor. We request additional packages of Patriot missile interceptors for Ukraine.”
As the U.S. midterm elections approach, Trump is increasingly blaming rising global diesel prices on the war between Ukraine and Russia, even though the war in Iran is playing a larger role in the fuel price surge.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration warned Ukraine and its allies in Europe that the United States could suspend European purchases of American weapons and intelligence sharing for Ukraine if kyiv does not stop its extensive strikes against Russian energy facilities, two European officials told CNN. Warnings from the State Department and Pentagon were sent this weekend to Ukrainian and European officials, including communications from the U.S. military directly to Ukrainian commanders.
Trump has since insisted that the United States has not stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine.
If the administration decides to suspend European arms purchases — which are done through a mechanism called the Ukraine Priority Needs List, or PURL — it would threaten any future deliveries of Patriot interceptors used to defend against ballistic missiles.
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