Patriot missiles are in short supply as the US diverts weapons to the Middle East and Moscow is launching massive drone swarms to drain defences further
Christina Lamb
April 4, 2026
The Sunday Times
Russia is changing tactics in Ukraine in a clear attempt to deplete air defences, such as American Patriot missiles, which have been diverted for the war in Iran, senior Ukrainian military officials have said.
Over the past two weeks, Russian forces have carried out repeated air attacks in broad daylight, some lasting as long as 24 hours and using as many as 1,000 drones, with the aim of using up the expensive missiles and exhausting mobile interceptor teams.
President Trump’s war on Iran has required the Pentagon to use up precious air defence weapons to protect the Gulf region, which has come under repeated attack from Tehran, and caused oil prices to spike, boosting Vladimir Putin’s war economy.
Colonel Yuriy Ignat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force, said recent Russian attacks were a deliberate attempt to use up precious air defences, particularly Pac-3 missiles used in Patriot systems which cost $4 million each. “They are doing attacks during the day and these are becoming longer and more exhausting,” Ignat said. “Not only are they harder to intercept as teams are exhausted [after] working all night and face difficulties such as being blinded by the sun, but this also impacts our economy as many offices are shut down all day and schools close. My own 12-year-old daughter was home all day.”
Since the war started more than four years ago, Russia has mainly carried out major drone and missile strikes at night. However, not only did Russia fire a record number of drones into Ukraine over the past month — more than 6,500 since the war started in Iran — but, for the last two weeks, it has repeatedly followed overnight barrages with hundreds more drones and missiles during the day.
On Friday people across Ukraine were woken by air raid sirens at 3am, the start of a massive attack which went on for ten hours, involving 542 drones, 27 cruise missiles and ten ballistic missiles. Although 515 drones were intercepted and 26 missiles destroyed, some got through, destroying 18 buildings in the Zhytomyr region, killing two people in Kharkiv and hitting a veterinary clinic in Kyiv, killing 20 animals. It also brought economic activity and education to a halt, many offices staying closed all day and schools shut across the country.
This was the third such attack in the last 12 days, starting with a 24-hour barrage from 6pm on March 23 that set a record for the number of drones and missiles launched — 984 —and hit cities in the west, far from the front line.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky has called for an Easter truce. Instead, he said, “the Russians have only intensified their strikes, turning what should have been silence in the skies into an Easter escalation”.
Showing a military map of Friday’s attack across Ukraine, with swarms of red planes to mark drones coming in rolling waves from the north, east and south, Colonel Ignat said that aside from Iranian-designed Shahed drones the Russians were also sending Russian-made Gerbera decoy drones, which are designed to mimic Shaheds with the same V-wing shape but carry much smaller explosives. “Since the beginning of the war in Iran we are seeing increasing quantities of attacks and different trajectories with more of these decoy drones, to use up our air defences,” he said.
The strategy, it seems, is working. “We are running out of Patriot missiles,” Ignat said. He showed on his phone a video of a Patriot launch system with only two rockets left in the eight barrels. “We survived this difficult winter because we had Patriots,” he added. “We constantly ask for more. If we’re left without these critically needed rockets, we’ll be left without anything and Russians will destroy our critical infrastructure.”
Stocks of US Patriot missiles worldwide are dwindling rapidly as Gulf states use them to fend off Iranian attacks. And the Trump administration has made clear it has other priorities than the needs of Kyiv.
So concerned is the Ukrainian government that Washington could withhold future supplies, even those paid for through European funding, that it is planning to appeal directly to the US people and Congress. This week it will release a video showing Patriot teams and F-16 pilots thanking the American people and other partners, with the message: “Thanks to your support, we are still alive — but we need more.”
The video opens with the chief maintenance engineer for Patriots, who used to work in a factory in the UK. “Thanks to the support of our partners, we were not only able to protect our cities but also save thousands of lives of our citizens,” he says. “We have hit more than 150 ballistic targets with Pac-3, which are the most effective against tactical ballistic missiles,” says another. “We need to replenish our stocks so we can keep working 24 hours per day, seven days per week.”
“Ukraine is the front line of Patriots in the world,” Colonel Ignat said. He pointed out that Ukraine is helping the US and other countries by developing new methods of using Patriots. Not only are they using them more sparingly by switching from automatic mode, which uses too many, but they are also adapting to how Russia has recently been changing the trajectory of its ballistic missiles to confuse the radar — a vital part of the Patriot system to calculate where the missile can be intercepted. “We had to adapt, though we haven’t overcome 100 per cent,” he said.
Though Patriots are most effective, Ignat said they are not the only air defences the Ukrainians are using. They have implemented a “multi-layered system” of “zoning”, he said, using a variety of smaller air defences including British-made Terrahawk Paladins, Star Streaks and Raven complex systems to intercept drones, so that by the time any missiles get through to Kyiv there are fewer to be dealt with by the larger Patriot system.
Aside from such ground-based systems and Ukraine’s own home-grown drone interceptors such as those Zelensky is now providing to Gulf countries, they are also deploying helicopters in never-before-used ways to strike targets in air, Ignat said. Mi-8 transport helicopters, for example, regularly carry mobile interceptor groups.
Other airborne systems include F-16 jets with Aim-9 Sidewinder missiles and old French Mirage 2000s.
One F-16 pilot involved in providing air defence during Friday’s attack said the air wing intercepted 17 of the cruise missiles and 11 drones. The pilot, who could not be named for security reasons, said he had personally carried out 140 flights and 137 air kills. “On one mission we can shoot down ten drones and we could do more if we had more missiles,” he said.
He confirmed the change in Russian strategy. “I’ve seen how Russia is trying to change tactics to exhaust our air defences with multiple waves and not give us the opportunity to kill all the targets,” he said. “But we’re ready. War is like a chess game; you need to predict your opponent’s move in advance — a battle of brains.”
Despite the increase in drone attacks, things are not going so well on the front line for Moscow, which for the first time in six months lost territory in Ukraine. Although the 745-mile front line remains largely static, Ukrainian troops took back a little over ten square miles in March, according to a study by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War — the first time it has recorded a net gain since October.
Christina Lamb OBE is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times. Lamb has won sixteen major awards including four British Press Awards and the European Prix Bayeux-Calvados for war correspondents. She is an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Global Fellow for the Wilson Centre for International Affairs in Washington D.C. In 2013 she was appointed an OBE by the Queen for services to journalism. In November 2018, Lamb received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Dundee. She has written ten books including the bestselling The Africa House and I Am Malala, co-written with Malala Yousafzai, which was named Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards 2013.