Ukraine just ran out of missiles to stop Russian bombs
3 hours ago · 16 October 2026Share
A Patriot M903 launcher station is operated during Exercise ARCTIC EDGE 2022 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, March 16, 2022. File photo. Petty Officer 1st Class Ryan Seelbach · Public domain
Ukraine just ran out of missiles that stop other missiles.
A source close to the situation told CNN that Ukraine's Patriot interceptors are gone. Patriots are the system that shoots down incoming ballistic missiles before they land.
And we already saw what that means. In the most recent major Russian attack, almost none of the ballistic missiles got intercepted. Not because Russia got better. Because Ukraine had nothing left to fire back with.
That attack hit two days ago, overnight. Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president. They hit all three of Kyiv's power plants. All three. Plus energy sites in Kharkiv.
600,000 people lost power.
People died too. CNN says four killed and 25 injured in Kyiv. Kyiv Independent's own count, updated overnight, says around five dead and 25 injured, including a seven-year-old. Al Jazeera puts the nationwide number at nine, but that includes three people killed in a separate strike on Lutsk. So the exact toll isn't settled.
Ukraine's Air Force says it managed to stop four of the ballistic missiles. Just four. And Zelensky says this time, Ukraine got no early warning from Western partners at all.
Here's the thing. This warning has come before.
Two months ago, Ukrainian officials let CNN into a Patriot site and said they'd nearly run out. Zelensky said he was making millions of phone calls to allies, begging for interceptors. He said Ukraine had a tenth of what it needed.
A month after that, Zelensky said Ukraine would get a licence to build its own Patriot missiles. Donald Trump never confirmed it. No licence ever showed up.
So two months on, the interceptors are gone again. Properly gone this time.
Zelensky says Ukraine needs 100 to 120 Patriot missiles every month to get through winter. According to the Financial Times, Trump already turned down a Ukrainian request for 300 interceptors as part of a winter package, to protect America's own stockpile during the war with Iran.
And the numbers keep getting worse. Zelensky says Ukraine is getting a third of the air-defence missiles from partners it got last year. The reason given is the Middle East war. Spain and Greece have refused to send their own Patriots. Poland has been warned its deliveries are running late.
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A fire at an energy infrastructure facility in Mykolaiv Raion of Mykolaiv Oblast of Ukraine due to Russian shelling in the evening of September 29, 2022. File photo. State Emergency Service of Ukraine · CC BY 4.0
Each interceptor costs around $4 million. And right now, they're scarce everywhere, because other countries are holding onto their own stock or rebuilding it because of the Iran war.
So what happened when Ukraine asked for more air defence? Something else got tightened instead.
Starshield, the military version of Elon Musk's Starlink, got restricted this week. Ukrainian officials say it caught them off guard and disrupted military operations, logistics, and the interception of jet-powered drones.
According to Kyiv Post, any terminal moving faster than 160 kilometres an hour got throttled overnight. That's exactly the speed Ukraine's strike and interceptor drones fly at.
Elon Musk says Starshield belongs to the US government, and any speed limits are a decision made by the US military and the president. A Ukrainian defence ministry source told CNN the system is working again, but the ministry still doesn't know why it was restricted in the first place. Denys Sienik, Ukraine's top diplomat in Washington, says speeds have improved but haven't fully returned to normal.
And the timing isn't an accident.
This same week, the White House struck a deal to buy Russian diesel. And it pushed Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil infrastructure. US intelligence told Ukraine's embassy in Washington that intelligence sharing would stop immediately if Ukraine kept striking Russian energy sites. Two European officials say the Trump administration also warned Ukraine and its allies that America could suspend European weapons purchases under the PURL programme, and cut intelligence sharing too, unless the deep strikes stop. Trump says the US has not cut intelligence sharing.
So Zelensky has a choice in front of him. He told the Financial Times he could agree to stop striking Russian energy sites, but only if Ukraine gets more Patriot interceptors at a minimum.
He says Ukraine is asking for more Patriot interceptors, and that Donald Trump has the tools to bring peace through strength and pressure on Russia.
He also says he feels betrayed by Trump's deal with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. And he says Ukraine will keep hitting Russian refineries anyway.
Zelensky met Mark Rutte, NATO's Secretary General, in Brussels and asked allies for steady Patriot deliveries.
Here's what we don't know. How long Ukraine can hold out without new interceptors. How big its remaining stockpile actually is. Whether America will ever approve that manufacturing licence. And who actually ordered the Starshield restriction — Musk says that call sits with the US military and the president, and Washington hasn't said who made it.
Right now, Ukraine is asking for missiles it doesn't have, through a satellite network it doesn't fully control, while its power stations keep getting hit.
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