The visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States is an absolutely revolutionary event. It has a symbolic dimension, but also a very concrete one. In our view, this also means a certain change in the Western approach to supporting Ukraine.
An expression of this change is the transfer of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Ukraine Patriot system. For now, symbolically, that is, theoretically one battery (battery command center, fire control radar, up to eight launchers, auxiliary equipment). We believe that in the long term, in a relatively short time, Ukraine will receive a two-battery squadron from the system, since a single battery, detached from its squadron base, has limited operational capabilities. The Americans use the term “single system” and it’s basically a battery, but it could also be a full squadron.
This in itself means breaking a certain taboo. Patriot is a resolutely modern system: although developed at the end of the 1970s, it is systematically developed from the latest technological advances. It is a symbol of American military technology – the name itself evokes associations with something extremely expensive, complicated and at the same time efficient and deadly effective.
For Russia, this is a signal that Ukraine will be equipped with the latest weapons and systems that will help it win. It starts with extremely defensive weaponry, as anti-aircraft missiles are difficult to use to attack enemy territory; US systems lack the ground-to-ground emergency fire mode that the Russian S-300 and other anti-aircraft missile systems have.
However, we believe that classifying weapons as “defensive” and “non-defensive” is mostly propaganda: after all, a rifle can be used in an attack, and a tank can be an excellent defensive tool, just like a airplane or cannon. .
