U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham will lobby for Ukraine to obtain some of the United States’s limited Patriot interceptor missiles when he visits the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Burnham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday in Kyiv, during which Zelensky repeated his desperate appeals for more Patriot interceptor missiles to help weather Russian drone and missile attacks. Speaking to Bloomberg, Burnham said he was “looking forward” to going to New York next month, with his Kyiv visit having made up his mind.
“I’ve not fully confirmed the details yet, but it’s likely I will go, particularly after today’s discussion,” he said after meeting with Zelensky. “Leaving today, I’m quite clear what I need to do in the next few weeks.”
The U.K. prime minister is almost certain to push heavily for an in-person meeting with President Donald Trump, during which he could lobby for the missiles in person. U.K. officials are making preparations for a potential meeting between the two, according to the Guardian.
The Kremlin was unsurprisingly not pleased with Burnham’s rhetoric. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s support for Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign, turned his attention to Burnham.
“We now see that such escalatory statements have prevailed,” Peskov said. “Mr Stubb is also a prominent representative of the ‘war party’, along with the British prime minister. They have distinguished themselves over the past few days with such bellicose statements. They want the war to continue.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and particularly after Moscow switched to an attritional military model in September 2022, Ukraine’s cities have been targeted by thousands of missiles and tens of thousands of drones. For the first four years of the campaign, Ukraine was able to consistently shoot down a sizable share of Russia’s drones and missiles, first with its legacy Soviet air defense network, then through the large-scale supply of Patriot and other Western missile defense systems.
Four-and-a-half years into the war, Russia has seized the upper hand in the race between offensive and interceptor missiles, draining Ukraine’s interceptor stockpiles. July 6 marked a grim milestone for Ukraine — the first day in which it failed to intercept any ballistic missiles. This lack of interceptions has become the norm.
Moscow has also shifted its production to ballistic missiles in recent months, which are impossible for most air defense systems to intercept and exceedingly difficult for U.S. Patriots.
ZELENSKY’S MISSILE PLEA SHOWS DIRE STATE OF UKRAINE’S WAR MACHINE
Zelensky adviser Dmytro Lytvyn told the Kyiv Post in March that Ukraine has received around 600 Patriot interceptor missiles throughout the war, nearly all of which have been expended. Zelensky has been aggressively lobbying for an emergency package of 300 Patriot interceptors before winter.
As it stands, there’s little chance that Trump will hand over such an amount, as projections put the number of U.S. Patriot interceptor missiles at between 759 and 827, roughly one-third the amount in U.S. stockpiles just before Feb. 28, when the United States first struck Iran this year. Acquiescing to Zelensky’s emergency plea would cut this remainder in half at a time when peace with Iran is still illusory.