At the beginning, HIMARS were delivered to Ukraine three times more per month than now. ATACMS in the form in which they are currently in Ukraine is useless if they cannot be used at military facilities in Russia. This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his participation in the annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy, an UNN correspondent reports.
"I don't think things have changed very much in the war. Unfortunately, we could not overcome this deficit, which depends on imports, on the help of our partners - this concerns 155-caliber artillery. Yes, we started producing it, but it is not enough for a full-scale war. You can see that even the production volumes of the whole of Europe are not enough to close this gap for such a large-scale land war. That's why the 155 caliber. Then we see now the difficulties with drones, FPVs, etc., which at one point were a great help when there was a shortage of artillery. We can also talk about 122-mm and 152-mm caliber, but I don't think that everyone will be interested in that," Zelensky said.
The President also drew attention to air defense.
"What I would pay attention to. Air defense. You said we have four Patriots. I can't say how many, but they (Patriots - ed.) are not enough, but, thank God, the reality is more positive than the official information... There are not enough missiles all the time. What is ATACMS for? ATACMS in the form we have today is useless if you can't use it on their military bases or on their sites with helicopters or on their military airfields with airplanes. If ATACMS has a big restriction on the use of missiles because there are few of them, unfortunately, it does not work," Zelensky said.
Zelenskyy also noted that HIMARS has been very helpful to Ukraine.
"I thank the United States for HIMARS. I can compare the figures, the percentage at the beginning of HIMARS deliveries, at the beginning of HIMARS use, there were three times more per month than now. Three times more. That is, during a full-scale war, we must increase this and increase production if necessary. We can't put pressure on the US, we are grateful to them anyway. But if we are talking about HIMARS, ATACMS and other means that can accurately shoot down and destroy the enemy, we need to increase production rather than limit the number," Zelensky said.
However, he noted that there are countries and types of weapons that are indeed increasing, but still not enough.
In addition, he said that Ukraine had shot down 35% of Russian drones with MANPADS.
"We use different types of man-portable air defense systems on the battlefield. 35% of all the "Shaheds", all the drones that Russia used against us, against our civilian infrastructure, we shot down with MANPADS, and this is a big deficit," Zelensky said.
Литва планує придбати для України ЗРК для систем ППО12.09.24, 15:49