Russian drone and missile strikes hit infrastructure and military targets in Ukraine on Monday night (Aug. 26), for the second night in a row. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed yesterday that some of the F-16s that NATO has supplied were used to shoot down missiles and drones on that night, the Wall Street Journal reported in an article the thrust of which is that Ukraine’s NATO-supplied air defenses are far too few to defend the country. “It’s not enough,” Zelenskyy said Aug. 27 after acknowledging that the jet fighters had been deployed against Russia’s “huge attack.” Large barrages can overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, with air-defense systems sometimes unable to reload quickly enough, the Journal noted.
Attacking Russian airfields with ATACMS is also not an option. An unnamed U.S. official told the Journal that a new U.S. intelligence assessment found that, since Ukraine began receiving ATACMS, Russia has adjusted by moving 90% of its aircraft to military bases beyond the missiles’ range. That means that launching ATACMS into Russian territory would have minimal impact today, the official said, adding that Ukraine would likely have more success with the indigenous drones it has been using to hit targets in Russia in recent months.