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Captain Vasyl Kravchuk smiles easily despite having endured 50 days of war.
He connects to the video call to do this interview from his air base, at an undisclosed location in Ukraine.
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He knows that the next few weeks will not grant him any respite. Russia may have suffered a setback in its failed attempts to take kyiv, but the eastern Donbas region is now very firmly in Moscow’s crosshairs.
So the men and women of the Dnipro Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade will continue to play a key role in the next phase of the war.
Defending the skies of Ukraine from Russian attacks is already proving to be quite a challenge. As a Ukrainian air defense official told the BBC, it’s like trying to use a giant fly swatter with big holes in it.
“We can’t cover all the airspace,” explains Captain Kravchuk.
The fact that he sits down to talk to us is remarkable, especially considering that “many air defense installations were totally or partially destroyed” in the early days of the war.
It is unusual for Ukrainian forces to publicly admit that they suffered significant losses in the early stages of the war.
But despite these losses, the surviving air defenses have still been used to good effect.
Oryx, a military and intelligence blog that has been tracking military losses during the war by visual confirmation, says that Ukraine has destroyed, damaged or captured at least 82 Russian aircraft, including planes, helicopters, and drones.
Ukraine’s equivalent aircraft losses stand at 33.
Indeed, their successes have confounded military experts, who predicted that Russia would rapidly achieve air superiority over Ukraine.
Russia already had a significant advantage in the air, fielding more than three times as many fighter jets as Ukraine.
The US Pentagon says Russian planes have been flying around 250 military missions and performing about 30 air strikes every day. Western officials still maintain that Russia is struggling to gain air superiority.
But instead, Ukraine’s aging fleet, made up mostly of MiG-29 fighter jets, has been struggling to compete and, at best, manages around 10 military missions per day.
Ukraine knows that Russia has the upper hand in the air, which is why it has repeatedly asked Western nations close their skies.
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lack of weapons
But Russia’s anticipated offensive in Donbas presents a new and more difficult challenge.
Justin Bronk, senior air force researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, says Russia is likely to have greater freedom of access in airspace over the eastern region than the rest of the country because of its proximity to airspace controlled by the United States. Russia.
To win that battle, Ukraine needs a mix of long-range, medium-range and short-range weapons that allow it to provide what is known as a “layered defense”.
The West has been providing a significant number of short-range surface-to-air missiles. The United States alone has already shipped 2,000 Stingers. The UK has also provided an unspecified number of Starstreak high-speed missiles.
But while Capt. Kravchuk says his country is grateful for these shoulder-fired missiles, known as Manpads, he says such weapons are only effective on the front lines.
This is because Manpads, man-portable air defense systems, are more effective against low-flying aircraft. Russia mainly uses long-range cruise missiles and high-altitude bombing.
Captain Kravchuk told the BBC: “Now we lack medium and long-range air defense systems… we don’t have enough”.
A renewed Russian offensive in Donbas will put further serious pressure on Ukraine’s limited air defense.
Beyond Donbas
Although the focus of the war is now in eastern Ukraine, the rest of the country still needs protection.
On the ground, we have seen evidence that Ukraine has been sending additional air defense systems to the east of the country in recent days. But it cannot afford to relocate all of its air defense systems to the Donbas region.
“We cannot leave half of Ukraine completely unprotected”Kravchuck says.
Ukraine has to use its air defenses not only to attack Russian aircraft, but also Russian ballistic and cruise missiles. They are having some success, but they cannot destroy everything.
Captain Kravchuk estimates that his unit is shooting down between 50 and 70% of Russia’s long-range missiles. As an example, he says that when Russia fired six missiles around Dnipro recently, they managed to stop four.
That still suggests that a significant number are penetrating the Ukrainian defense. The Pentagon says Russia has launched 1,550 missiles since the war began.
Russia says it has also been using hypersonic missiles. There is not much Ukraine’s air defenses can do against them as they travel at five times the speed of sound.
But the harsh reality is that, without more significant support, Ukraine will find it increasingly difficult to defend itself against Russian air and missile attacks the longer this war drags on.
A senior Western intelligence official told the BBC that medium and long-range air defenses were at the top of Ukraine’s list of requests for more weapons supplies: “They are very specific in that they need air defense ammunition… they need in large quantities.
And as Captain Kravchuk told us: “Past wars have shown that whoever commands the air wins the war”.
Source: Elcomercio
