Putin Vows to Bolster Russian Air Defences After Ukrainian Drone Wave; SPIEF Finale Lands
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed Russia will bolster its air defences in response to Ukrainian drone attacks, speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) finale that closed Sunday. The vow comes after the Ukrainian Kronstadt naval base strike on a guided-missile corvette, the second large St Petersburg drone wave (Russia intercepting 376 drones), and the Wednesday-Thursday St Petersburg oil terminal strike. The London Coalition of the Willing summit Sunday coordinated additional Patriot interceptor replenishment for Ukraine.
Putin’s air-defence vow is the structural Russian response to the Ukrainian deep-strike campaign of the past week. ISW reports the Russian ultranationalist community presented extreme and unrealistic scenarios for Russia’s military future at SPIEF, indicating Kremlin domestic pressure to escalate the air-defence build-up. Each Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor costs roughly $4 million and is produced at a constrained rate of around 600 per year industry-wide; the London-summit replenishment commitment is the principal short-term Western response to the constrained Ukrainian air-defence stockpile. Russian Geran-2 attack drones are produced at a rate of around 5,000 per month. The Russia-Ukraine bilateral diplomatic track remains closed after Putin’s Friday rejection of Zelensky’s face-to-face meeting offer.