Russia Fires 35 Missiles and 185 Drones at Kyiv, Exposing Patriot Gap

Ballistic terror raids on cities evoke the German V-2 rocket campaign against London in late 1944, when 1,300 missiles killed about 2,700 civilians before Allied forces overran launch sites. Today, however, missile defence rather than ground advance decides whether bombardment persists, and Kyiv’s inability to field enough interceptors underscores a 30-year trend: offence (cheap, abundant drones and short-range ballistic missiles) is outpacing the far costlier defence. Since the 1991 Gulf War first televised Patriot–Scud duels, states have raced to procure anti-missile shields, yet global stockpiles remain thin; the U.S. makes roughly 500 PAC-3 interceptors a year—insufficient for a conflict that now consumes them weekly. If great-power munitions production cannot scale, urban centres may again resemble pre-Geneva targets, normalising “wars of the cities” last seen between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. Whether Washington releases Patriot technology, or Russia exhausts its own missile inventory first, will shape not only Ukraine’s survival but the next century’s equilibrium between strike and shield.