Captain Vasyl Kravchuk smiles easily despite having endured 55 days of war.
He connects to the video call to do this interview from his air base, in an undisclosed location in the Ukraine.
He knows that the coming weeks will not grant him any respite. Russia may have suffered a setback in its failed attempts to take kyiv, but eastern Donbas is now very firmly in Moscow’s crosshairs.
So the men and women of the Dnipro Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade will continue to play a key role in the next phase of the war.
Defend the skies of Ukraine from attacks Russians is already being quite a challenge. As a Ukrainian air defense official told the BBC, it’s like trying to use a giant fly swatter with big holes.
“We can’t cover all the airspace ”, explains Captain Kravchuk.
The fact that he sits down to talk with us is something remarkable, especially considering that “many air defense installations were totally or partially destroyed” in the first days of the war.
It is unusual for Ukrainian forces to publicly admit that they suffered significant losses in the early stages of the war.
But despite these losses, the surviving air defenses have still been used to good effect.
Oryx, a military and intelligence blog that has been tracked Considering military losses during the war by visual confirmation, says that Ukraine has destroyed, damaged or captured at least 82 aircraft rusas, including airplanes, helicopters and drones.
Ukraine’s equivalent aircraft losses stand at 33.
In fact, his successes have confounded military experts, who predicted that Russia would rapidly achieve air superiority over Ukraine.
Russia already had a significant advantage in the air , deploying more than three times as many fighter jets as Ukraine.
The US Pentagon says Russian planes have been flying around 250 military missions and carrying out some 30 airstrikes every days. Western officials still maintain that Russia is struggling to gain air superiority.
But, on the contrary, Ukraine’s aging fleet, made up mostly of MiG-29, has been struggling to compete and, at best, manages around 10 military missions to the day.
Ukraine knows that Russia has the advantage in the air, that is why it has asked repeatedly to Western nations to close their skies .
- Why the West does not activate a “no-fly zone” in Ukraine as requested by Zelensky
Lack of weapons
But Russia’s anticipated offensive in Donbas presents a new and more difficult challenge.
Justin Bronk, researcher principal on air force at the Royal United Services Institute, says Russia is likely to have greater freedom of access in airspace over the eastern region than the rest of the country due to its proximity to Russian-controlled airspace.
To win that battle, Ukraine needs a combination of long-, medium-, and short-range weapons that allow it to provide what is known as a “layered defense”.
The West has been providing a significant number of short-range surface-to-air missiles. Only the United States has already sent 2. Stingers. The UK has also provided an unspecified number of high-velocity Starstreak missiles.
But while Captain Kravchuk says his country is grateful for those shoulder-fired missiles, known as Manpads, ensures that these weapons are only effective in the line of combat.
This is because the Manpads, portable air defense systems, are more effective against low-flying aircraft. Russia mainly uses long-range cruise missiles and high-altitude bombing.
Captain Kravchuk told the BBC: “Now we lack air defense systems of medium and long range… we don’t have enough”.
A renewed Russian offensive in Donbas will put another serious pressure on Ukraine’s limited air defense.
Beyond Donbas
Although the focus of the war is now in eastern Ukraine, the rest of the country still needs protection.
On the ground, we have seen evidence that Ukraine has been sending additional air defense systems to the east of the country in recent days. But it cannot afford to relocate all its air defense systems to the Donbas region.
“We cannot leave half of Ukraine completely unprotected”, says Kravchuck.
Ukraine has to use its air defenses not only to attack Russian aircraft, but also Russian ballistic and cruise missiles. They are having some success, but they can’t destroy everything.
Captain Kravchuk estimates that his unit is shooting down among the 36 and the 70 % of Russia’s long-range missiles. As an example, he says that when Russia fired six missiles around Dnipro recently, they managed to stop four.
That still suggests a significant number are penetrating the Ukrainian defense. Pentagon says Russia has launched 1,550 missiles since the war began.
Russia says it has also been using hypersonic missiles. There is not much Ukraine’s air defenses can do against them as they travel at five times the speed of sound.
But The harsh reality is that, without more significant support, Ukraine will find it increasingly difficult to defend itself against Russian air and missile attacks the longer this war drags on.
A senior Western intelligence official told the BBC that long-range and medium-range air defenses were at the top of Ukraine’s list of requests for more weapons supplies: “They are very specific that they need air defense ammunition… they need it in large quantities”.
And as Captain Kravchuk told us: “Past wars have shown that whoever controls the air wins the war”.
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