Ukraine’s missile crisis, corruption scandal expanding
Kyiv has run out of missiles so its now hyping the FREYJA anti-ballistic missile cooperation. Sounds good, but its nothing but hot air at the moment as no one has any ammo left.
Ukraine’s stockpile of air-defence interceptor missiles is running down to zero this week, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s mounting desperation as the hunt for replacement ammunition fails is becoming impossible to hide, with the country’s skies over its cities now largely undefended against Russian ballistic missiles.
“The number of air-defence missiles supplied by our partners has dropped threefold compared with 2025,” Zelenskiy said on August 5 after meeting his acting defence minister and top military officials.
“Our partners do have the missiles,” he said, calling on them to make “the necessary political decisions” to get them to Kyiv.
The war is likely to come a cusp in the next few months. Iuliia Mendel, Zelenskiy’s former press secretary, reports that a growing number of families are fleeing the front line cities for the west of the country, or are leaving completely. Everyone knows what is coming.
There is chaos in the White House too as the US is in the same boat. Trump has woken up to the fact that they have used up their stock of missiles – there are about 759 PAK-3 left and its stock of ATCMS is completely depleted. This doesn’t mean the US is defenceless, but it does mean it can’t attack anything anymore, which removes all its leverage to bring the Iran war to an end.
Apparently there was a bust up yesterday between Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over the arms issue. Hegseth blamed his deputy, who called an emergency meeting to “urgently” find more rockets – a bit pointless, as you can’t find something that doesn’t exist. As we have repeatedly reported, it will take years to rebuild these armouries.
Ukraine is indulging in the same “urgent meetings” to fix unsolvable problem supply problems. Bankova’s rhetoric has changed in the last week and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is hyping the “FREYJA” anti-ballistic missile programme, a joint effort with the EU/Nato.
As we report, there is no air defence ammo left so the only option is for Fire Point to build some as well as build Ukraine’s own ballistic missile so that it can inflict a maximum cost on Russia for any missiles Russia fires at Ukraine as part of the mutual “punishment strategy” both sides are employing.
Reading through the reports and it all sounds very positive. Fire Point has brought 13 industrial partners on board and started integrating the system’s core components. Norway’s Kongsberg is expected to supply the command-and-control system tying everything together; Germany’s Diehl Defense is a candidate for guidance tech (similar to what it uses in IRIS-T); other European partners are contributing radar, sensors and integration work.
The interceptor itself is the FP7.X — an accelerated version of Fire Point’s FP7 missile — now being integrated with its guidance/targeting systems after at least five test launches. Target: first successful ballistic-missile interception by mid-2027, at a cost under €1mn per interceptor (roughly 4-6x cheaper than some Patriot missiles — earlier estimates put FP7.X at ~$700k vs ~$3.8mn for a PAC-3). FREYJA is designed as an open-architecture system so Ukrainian interceptors can plug into European radars/seekers/command infrastructure.
But pay attention to the language of the reports: “started integrating”, “is expected to supply,” “a candidate for…”. Nothing exists. This defence/retaliation system is all on paper. Ukraine needs all this now. Today. Not sometime in 2027. There won’t be anything left of its major cities by next summer.
On the night of August 5 Russia fired 24 ballistic missiles, 4 Zircon/Onyx hypersonic-class missiles, and 115 drones at Kyiv and the surrounding oblast. Ukrainian defences intercepted 98 of the drones but not a single missile — all 28 got through. The strike killed 17 (8 of them civilians on a train platform at Kvitneva near Brovary) and injured 44-51. It hit Nova Poshta’s sorting centre and other major logistics/civilian infrastructure.
On the night of August 6 a second wave hit Kharkiv and Sumy regions, killing at least 6 (3 in Balakliya, 3 in Sumy, 19 wounded) — a regional official called it the area’s “most massive” drone attack of the war. There was also more video footage of Russian FPV drones on “human safari” on the streets of Sumy, chasing down people and cars and blowing them up.
This wasn’t even a record: the largest single-night barrage came May 13-14, 2026, when Russia launched 1,567 strike drones and 56 missiles in one night. But it was one of the most leathal as Ukraine is now unable to stop any of the missile attacks.
Oh. And in other news, Russia is preparing to station a missile unit made up of North Korean troops in the Voronezh region, Andrii Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), said on Wednesday. Because, you know, Russia only already massively outguns Ukraine with missiles. The CRINK military alliance (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) continues to expand. This week China reportedly flew 16 giant cargo planes to Tehran, packed with ballistic missiles. The West is in military disarray. The CRINK Alliance is looking increasingly organised. And their arsenals are not empty. They are full to overflowing as Putin, Xi and Kim all made those defence sector procurement investments the West ignored because they thought the Ukraine war was going to be a walk in the park.
FREYJA is more of the same “something must be done” smokescreen. Zelenskiy plan is to try and guilt-trip the Western allies into giving up what few missiles they have left by harping on about the cost in Ukrainian blood if they don’t. But after a million dead and wounded, the West has long since shown it doesn’t give a monkey’s if Ukrainians get killed. The West (Europe and the US) are not willing to sacrifice a single life of their own citizens but are totally happy to splurge when it comes to expending Ukrainian lives. Zelenskiy must be fully aware of this, but he is locked into continuing the war and has no way out.
On top of all this, as we reported, Zelenskiy’s domestic problems keep piling up. Yesterday, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) charged Olha Stefanishyna, until recently Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, with corruption for buying an apartment for pennies on the dollar – the new bribing scheme that has become popular in Ukraine.
Stefanishyna appeared before Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court on August 5 for an arraignment; prosecutors are seeking UAH13mn (around $300,000) bail.
Stefanishyna is a very competent diplomat, having lead Ukraine’s negotiations in its EU accession bid before being posted to Washington, but in Ukraine corruption is the system and everyone in high office has been helping themselves to all the assistance money.
Stefanishyna is also blamed for triggering the recent reshuffle. She resigned voluntarily on August 3 “for personal reasons,” and the reshuffle was launched a bit over a week later. It turns out those reasons was she learned that she was under a NABU investigation for the apartment scam. Zelenskiy decided to try and contain the damage with a cull of rotten senior figures, but made the mistake of sacking Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, one of the few people in his administration who was actively fighting corruption; as part of the audit Fedorov ordered on taking over, he found $1.4bn-worth of stealing…
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