After the Russian strike that left at least 51 dead in Poltava, the warning and defense systems called into question

Russia bombed the central Ukrainian city of Poltava on Tuesday, killing at least 51 people and injuring more than 250. kyiv is demanding Western supplies of air defense systems.

A Russian strike killed at least 51 people and injured more than 200 on Tuesday, September 3, in the city of Poltava in Ukraine. A military training facility was targeted and a hospital was also damaged. It is one of the deadliest bombings since the start of the war. The destruction is such that rescue workers were active until Tuesday evening searching through the rubble.

However, at this stage, it is still not known who the victims were, whether they were civilians or military personnel. No official statement has been made on this point, as is often the case when military personnel are hit. It is indeed likely that the majority of those killed were soldiers who were taking part in a military ceremony. This is in any case what several independent military experts in Ukraine claim.

On the other hand, we know a little more about the course of this attack that completely took the inhabitants of Poltava by surprise. The alarm sirens sounded at 9 am on Tuesday, and only two minutes later, the two ballistic missiles hit the city. Usually the delay between the alarm siren and the strike is rather 20 to 30 minutes. The investigation will therefore have to demonstrate whether or not there was a fault in the warning system.

According to General Jerome Pellistrandi, editor-in-chief of the magazine Défense nationale, the difficulty for the Ukrainians is that the territory to be defended is extremely large: “It’s 600 000 km², that’s bigger than France. And they don’t have enough ground-to-air defense systems. So we have to make choices between protecting kyiv, Kharkiv or Odessa. It’s likely that in some places, there won’t be the means, particularly ground-to-air missiles, to protect the airspace above cities like Poltava. This will also force us to think about protecting cities and the fact that there are military installations right in the middle of these cities.”.

International reactions have been numerous since Tuesday. After this strike, the White House, for example, spoke of the “brutality” by Vladimir Putin. London evokes “a sickening act of aggression”On the part of the Ukrainian authorities, and this has become systematic after each major strike, kyiv calls on its Western partners for help.

“We need new weapons to protect ourselves from attacks like the one in Poltava.”

Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

to CNN

“This is a new reason why it is necessary to supply Ukraine with air defense systems, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba insisted again on Tuesday, speaking to CNN. Ballistic missiles are very difficult to intercept. The only way to do that is to have, for example, Patriot air defense systems. That’s the only way to intercept these missiles. I don’t know how many more tragedies like this have to happen before new commitments are made.”.

Ukraine already has several air defense systems, but this is not enough for kyiv, which is also insisting on another request repeated, again, on Tuesday by Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president wants to obtain a green light from his allies, an authorization to strike deep into Russian territory using long-range missiles. This would allow Ukraine to target Russian military bases from which planes take off that drop missiles on the country. But for the moment kyiv’s partners, and in particular the United States, are saying no for fear of a new escalation of the conflict.