Top Ukrainian activists are begging the West not to let Ukraine’s urgent need for more air defense systems get lost in the conversation, as Washington, London and other key allies of Kyiv debate whether to lift restrictions on the use of Western missiles to strike targets inside Russia.
In an interview with NatSec Daily, Ukrainian human rights lawyer and Nobel Prize laureate OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK warned that Russian leader VLADIMIR PUTIN is using attacks on civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and the energy grid, as a way to conduct psychological warfare against Ukrainians and blunt their resolve.
“They deliberately provide such enormous pain and suffering with civilians to break any idea that we can to resist such [an] enormous opposing power, to make [it] so painful for people to live in the circumstances,” said Matviichuk, whose organization, the Centre for Civil Liberties, was jointly awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
She argued for expediting existing orders for critical air defense technologies — like Patriot, National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System and IRIS-T systems.
“There is a crucial time before winter is coming and we face a possible new wave of depopulation of the country,” she argued. “We urgently need air defense systems and rockets to be able to secure Ukrainian sky and protect peaceful cities and peaceful civilians.”
Voice of Ukraine 