What Selenskyj demands – and what the allies have to offer

Ein “Protection Shield for Ukraine”, that was the biggest request of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On Tuesday he presented them to the heads of state and government of the G-7 countries, to whose video conference he was connected. Previously, Zelenskyj had asked for air defense systems in all sorts of telephone calls. That was his top priority when he spoke to the heads of government in Prague last week.

Russia’s massive airstrikes on Kyiv and other major cities since the beginning of the week have added urgency to the demand. According to their statements, the defenders were able to shoot down about half of the rockets, cruise missiles and drones, mainly with the Soviet Buk and S-300 systems. But the other half killed eleven people on Monday alone and caused serious damage to the country’s energy supply.

Defense ministers and military leaders from nearly 50 countries are meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to coordinate their continued support for Ukraine. It is the sixth meeting in the so-called Ramstein format. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov thanked Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht for the delivery of the first of four Iris-T SLM air defense systems handed over on Tuesday. “A new era in air defense has begun,” he wrote on Twitter ahead of the start of the meeting he’s attending.

The system developed by the German manufacturer Diehl Defense is not only the first western, but also the most modern air defense system that Ukraine has received. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had promised the country at the beginning of June. “In this way, we are enabling Ukraine to protect an entire city from Russian air raids,” Scholz said in the Bundestag at the time. The federal government had to influence Egypt for this.

The country had ordered seven units in 2018 and agreed that four of them would initially go to Kyiv. Zelenskyj thanked Scholz on Tuesday for “accelerating” the delivery. The three other systems are to be delivered next year. Then it’s Egypt’s turn, and only then the Bundeswehr. She wants to procure the system from the special assets of one hundred billion euros.

Iris-T entered service in 2005 as a guided missile for the Eurofighter. Building on this, Diehl Defense has been developing a medium-range ground-based air defense system since 2007; the addition SLM stands for Surface Launched Medium Range. For this purpose, the range of the interceptor missile has been significantly increased, with eight each launching from a mobile launcher. You control your target with a state-of-the-art, interference-resistant infrared seeker, but you can also have the target data transmitted via GPS. The target is detected by a radar with 360 degree coverage. This configuration is superior to the old Patriot system, which required combining multiple units to provide all-around defense.