US to Supply Ukraine With Another Patriot System, Sources Say

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Facts

• The US will soon provide Ukraine with another Patriot missile defense system, US officials anonymously told the press on Tuesday — revealing a decision from US Pres. Joe Biden before it was publicly announced.¹
• The decision follows repeated calls from Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Western help to improve his country's missile defenses. 'If we had these modern Patriot systems, [Russian] airplanes wouldn't be able to fly close enough to drop the (glide) bombs on the civilian population and the military,' he said at a press conference in Spain last month.¹
• Those calls were repeated at another press conference on Tuesday — this time in Germany — as the country hosted a two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference.²
• Coming ahead of a big week of diplomacy — including the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Italy and a Ukrainian peace summit in Switzerland — Zelenskyy further called on Western allies, as well as private enterprise, to help repair Ukraine's energy infrastructure that's been badly damaged in Russian strikes.³
• Another agenda item regarding Ukraine, to be discussed at the G7 meeting starting Thursday, was plans to use seized Russian assets — totaling an estimated €260B ($280B) — to fund Ukraine's war effort. However, reports suggested there were major disagreements between the EU and the US about how to go about it.⁴
• Elsewhere, with Ukraine's government budget being $5B in the red following more than two years of war, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that Ukraine is preparing to auction off as many as 20 state-controlled firms in the hopes raising $100M.⁵

Sources: ¹Associated Press (a), ²Al Jazeera, ³Associated Press (b), ⁴Politico and ⁵New York Times.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Associated Press. Russian strikes on Ukraine have wreaked havoc on civilians and have decimated the country's energy infrastructure. Ukraine needs urgent help to protect against these missile attacks, but also assistance in repairing power-generation capacities to return the flow of electricity to the country.
• Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by TASS. Attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure are a direct consequence of the failure of the country's leadership to meaningfully engage in peace talks as well as thinking they can defeat Russia on the battlefield. These attacks will stop once a more sober position is reached and Ukraine returns to the negotiating table.

Predictions