- Ukraine reported a lower success rate in shooting down Russian missiles targeting Odesa.
- Ukraine's president said it needs better missile defense systems to stop infrastructure attacks.
- Ukraine said it shot down 37 of 63 missiles and drones Wednesday, mainly targeting Odesa.
Ukraine reported a lower success rate in shooting down missiles targeting the key port city of Odesa, a likely sign that it doesn't have enough ammo to stop all the missiles from Russia.
Over the last two nights, Russia targeted grain shipment sites and port infrastructure, mainly in the Ukrainian city of Odesa. It came after the Kremlin pulled out of a UN deal allowing safe passage to vessels transporting grain in the Black Sea.
In its air defense update, the Ukrainian armed forces said Russia fired 63 missiles and drones to attack Ukraine, and 37 had been shot down from Tuesday to Thursday, giving it a 59% success rate.
It's a significantly lower success rate than Ukraine was reporting in foiling Russian air attacks in Kyiv in May, when it said that 90% of Russian missiles and drones were being downed.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's president, on Wednesday said that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense systems.
"It is necessary to ensure air defense of all Ukrainian cities, especially those that supply the military, through which the main logistics corridors pass, where strategic infrastructure and nuclear facilities are located," he said at a press conference in Kyiv.
He called on Ukraine's Western allies to supply it with more SAMP/T and Patriot missile defense systems to protect against Russian attacks. The systems are used to shoot down long-range missiles, such as the Russian Kalibr cruise missiles used in the recent attacks on Odesa.
"They work perfectly. If we had additional systems, they would protect the infrastructure of Odesa, and not just the port. Or it could be Patriot systems," he said.
Yaroslav Trofimov, a foreign affairs correspondent at The Wall St Journal, said that Ukraine's relatively low missile interception success rate indicated that it needed urgent improvements to its air defenses.
—Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) July 20, 2023
"Overnight, Ukraine managed to shoot down only 5 out of 19 missiles fired by Russia at Odesa and Mykolaiv port infrastructure," he tweeted Thursday, referencing data on Wednesday night's Odesa attack. "It urgently needs more and more modern air defenses — or an ability to take out Russian launchers in Crimea."
Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian government advisor, said some of the missiles used to target Odesa were Oniks, a type of low-flying anti-ship missile Ukraine had no defenses against.
Ukraine was vulnerable to Russian missile and drone attacks in the early months of the conflict, but has built an effective multi-layered air defense system around Kyiv with the help of its Western allies, a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) said.
This means that it's able to shoot down most of the missiles and drones Russia uses to target the Ukrainian capital, reporting a 100% success rate on some nights in June.
But a problem is missile defense ammunition stockpiles, with a US defense official telling Reuters last year that Russia was deliberately trying to exhaust Ukraine's supply by launching waves of attacks, sometimes using unarmed missiles.
And according to the ECFR report, Kyiv is the only Ukrainian city with sufficient air defense protection, and Ukraine's other major cities remain vulnerable to Russian attacks.
"Extending the missile sanctuary to the rest of the country is no easy task, but it will enable future Ukrainian offensives and show the Russians that their illegal war cannot be won," it said, calling on Western countries to increase its supply or air defense systems and ammunition to Ukraine.