Zelenskyy urges European missile defence built within a year

Europe’s only operational anti-ballistic shield is largely American, and Ukraine says it cannot wait. Speaking on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Europe should build its own missile defence system within a year, arguing that reliance on scarce US-made Patriot batteries has become a strategic bottleneck as Russia continues to strike Ukrainian cities and power infrastructure, according to the Guardian.

Zelenskyy’s timeline is deliberately blunt. Ukraine has depended on Patriot to intercept Russian ballistic missiles, but supplies are limited and deployment priorities are shifting. Reuters reporting cited by the Guardian notes that Patriots are in short supply as the US increases deployments in the Gulf amid President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, while Europe’s main alternative—the Franco-Italian SAMP/T system—exists in relatively small numbers.

The call lands as Russia sustains pressure across Ukraine’s rear. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 236 drones overnight into Sunday; 203 were shot down, while 32 hit targets in 18 locations. In Chernihiv, a “massive” drone attack killed a 16-year-old boy and wounded four others, local officials said. In Kherson, a drone strike hit a van in the city centre; one man later died of his wounds and another was hospitalised.

Kyiv is also trying to show it can impose costs inside Russia with domestic systems. The Ukrainian general staff said Ukraine struck the Atlant Aero drone factory in Taganrog, about 55km from Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, starting a fire at a facility that designs and produces strike and reconnaissance drones. Ukraine’s navy said it used domestically produced Neptune cruise missiles. Russian officials confirmed an attack on “commercial enterprises” as well as a vocational school and multiple cars.

The European missile-defence push is less a technical announcement than a procurement and governance problem. A continent-wide anti-ballistic architecture would require sensors, interceptors, command-and-control integration and stockpiles large enough to be expended in days during sustained attacks. It also requires a buyer willing to sign long-term contracts at scale—something European governments have historically avoided, preferring short runs and national carve-outs that keep unit costs high and delivery schedules slow.

Zelenskyy’s one-year target implicitly assumes wartime-style purchasing and a willingness to standardise. Fire Point, a maker of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile, told Reuters it is in talks with European companies to field a lower-cost air-defence system by next year. Even if such a system emerges, it would still need production lines, training pipelines and a doctrine for who controls intercept decisions in peacetime and crisis.

Politics is also moving under Ukraine’s feet. The Guardian notes that Bulgaria’s election is expected to produce another coalition negotiation, with projections putting a centre-left bloc linked to former president Rumen Radev first. Radev has condemned the invasion but opposed military aid and favoured talks with Moscow, which could complicate EU consensus on funding and weapons transfers.

On Sunday night, as air-raid alerts again followed drones over Ukrainian regions, Zelenskyy was asking Europe to plan for a future where the next Patriot battery may be needed somewhere else first.