Russian Summer Offensive Continues; Patriot Pressure on Ukrainian Air Defence Persists
Russian forces continued large-scale missile and drone barrages against Ukrainian cities overnight Thursday-Friday, including a hypersonic missile strike on Kyiv that prompted President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “genuinely deranged” framing and his subsequent direct Putin meeting proposal. Ukrainian deep-strike operations against Russian infrastructure continue. The Tuesday-Wednesday Russian mass barrage killed at least 18 across Ukraine including Kyiv apartment-building strikes. The Patriot interceptor stockpile pressure remains the binding constraint.
The hypersonic missile strike on Kyiv is the third Russian use of Oreshnik-class intermediate-range weaponry against Ukrainian cities since the start of the early-summer offensive. Each Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor costs roughly $4 million and is produced at a constrained rate of around 600 per year industry-wide; standard PAC-3 interceptors do not reliably engage ballistic-missile threats of the Oreshnik class. The US redirect to the Iran theatre during the war removed several batteries from the Ukraine pipeline; Hegseth’s “find a way” signal becomes operationally relevant if the Iran framework deal signs and Patriot replenishment can resume. Russian Geran-2 attack drones are produced at a rate of around 5,000 per month.