Recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once again made a request to the West in a video conference with the leaders of the G7, calling for increased support for Ukrainian forces, including the provision of advanced weapons such as tanks, heavy artillery and missiles. Soon, after the meeting, Zelensky ushered in good news.
According to CNN, the US government is preparing to supply the Patriot air defense system to Ukraine, with plans to be announced as early as this week. The plan needs to be approved by U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin and signed by President Biden. According to U.S. officials' estimates, the plan is highly likely to be approved. Once the plan is finalized, the United States will deliver the Patriot missile system within days and train Ukrainian soldiers to use the missile system at a U.S. military base in Germany.
The "Patriot" missile system is the third generation of medium and long-range, medium and high altitude surface-to-air missile system developed by the United States, with three models, of which the "Patriot-3" is the most advanced, the performance is comparable to the Russian-made S-400 air defense missile system, and is known as the star weapon of the US military. The supply of Patriot missiles this time will become the latest and most sophisticated weapons and equipment provided by the United States to Ukraine. Given that Ukraine is facing frequent air strikes by the Russian army, anti-aircraft weapons have become an urgent need. If Ukraine acquires Patriot missiles, it will be able to intercept Russian missiles to some extent, especially those with precision-guided cruise missiles. In addition, the Patriot missile can also threaten Russian fighters carrying out air strikes.
It is worth noting that although the introduction of the Patriot missile system will not be able to build a full-fledged air defense network over large cities such as Kiev, nor will it fundamentally change the tide of the war, it will weaken the ability of the Russian army to strike at important targets inside Ukraine. Therefore, once the news came out, the Russian side quickly said that if the United States supplied the Patriot missile to Ukraine, then this air defense system would become a "legitimate target" for the Russian army. However, the Russian side also stressed that it needs to wait for the official announcement of the United States.
However, when it was the turn of the US official, the White House seemed to begin to be ambiguous. At a recent regular press conference, multiple journalists asked whether the United States would provide Patriot missiles to Ukraine, but both State Department and Pentagon spokespeople declined to comment, claiming that "there is no publicly available information."
Some people think that the United States may once again use a strategy that has been used many times to deliberately leak information about the supply of Patriot missiles to Ukraine to test Russia's response. If the United States really intends to provide, it should directly announce the supply plan, and not be so vague and ambiguous. It is worth mentioning that due to the high price of the "Patriot" air defense system, referring to Turkey's purchase price in 2018, the total price of 4 systems is up to 3.5 billion US dollars, and the cost of each system is about 875 million US dollars. In addition, the price of the missiles required for the system is quite expensive, ranging from $1 million to more than $3 million. Taking into account the rate of ammunition consumption on the battlefield in Ukraine, even the United States needs to carefully weigh the cost of using the provision of the "Patriot" air defense system.
In general, it seems that the United States still does not intend to end the conflict in Ukraine, but continues to play the role of "adding fuel to the fire".