Ihor Petrenko, Doctor of Political Sciences, expert of the United Ukraine Analytical Center
Air defense is usually discussed as a humanitarian issue – lives saved, missiles shot down, homes destroyed. But on the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, Ukraine framed the question differently: if ballistic missiles are the last argument with which Putin drags out the war, then interceptor missiles for Patriot are no longer a plea for help, but a test of whether the partners are serious when they talk about peace.
Strip away the propaganda noise, and Russia has one working argument left in this war – ballistic missiles. Its ground offensive is crawling sixteen times slower than a year ago. Shahed drones, including jet-powered ones, Ukraine consistently shoots down at a rate of at least ninety percent. But against ballistic missiles the means are critically lacking – and it was precisely these that Russia had been stockpiling for the strike on Kyiv on the night of July 2: thirty-one people killed, around a hundred wounded, with the rescue operation concluding only the following evening.
Zelensky formulated this in his address to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly – more than two hundred and fifty parliamentarians from fifty-four states – and delivered it from Odesa, a city living under attack at this very moment. The formula is simple: Russia is placing its final bet on missile strikes, because it has no other ways left to prolong the war. It wants ballistic missiles to break what its army could not. The answer is named just as concretely: interceptor missiles for Patriot. The partners have them. What is lacking is not missiles – it is political will, and it is lacking most of all in Washington.
The demand did not hang in the air as a fine wish from the podium. Within two days it was channeled, address by address, through telephone diplomacy: conversations with Merz, with Trump – with an agreement to continue in person at the NATO summit in Ankara – with Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson, and with Macron. With Sweden, the talk was about the practical dimension of the sky: launching the use of Gripens under agreements already concluded – infrastructure, training, timelines. With Macron – about Europe needing to be inside the diplomatic process, not watching it from the corridor.
And here is the key pivot worth putting on record. Air defense has traditionally been presented as a humanitarian issue: the protection of civilians, women's and children's faces in the news reports. All of that is true. But in the logic of negotiations it is also an instrument for compelling diplomacy. If ballistic missiles are Putin's last argument against ending the war, then whoever genuinely wants negotiations takes that argument away from him. Interceptors for Patriot are a test: talk of peace either converts into a concrete decision, or remains talk.
As for Ankara itself, honesty demands restraint. The media write about possible big decisions, but the final statement is still being negotiated – Italy, according to Bloomberg, is proposing to remove from it the mention of support for Ukraine in 2027. So Ukraine is heading to the summit not for a guaranteed result, but with a well-rehearsed position and bilateral arrangements agreed in advance. We will judge by the outcomes, not by the announcements.
What does Ukraine get from this? The question of interceptors has been moved from the category of “please help us” to the category of “show whether your words about peace are serious” – and fixed at every level simultaneously: before the parliamentarians of half a hundred states, in conversations with leaders, and on the summit agenda. Now the absence of a decision will also be an answer – and everyone will understand whose.
