Ukraine runs out of Patriot interceptors as Trump calls its refinery strikes a disgrace and Europe rallies behind Zelensky in Brussels

The shield is empty, and it emptied in the middle of an attack.

Ukraine has run out of interceptor missiles for its American made Patriot systems, a source familiar with the situation told CNN on Thursday. The Patriot is one of the few weapons Ukraine has that can reliably knock down a Russian ballistic missile. In the last big strike, overnight into Wednesday, Russian ballistic missiles hit three power plants in Kyiv and energy sites in Kharkiv, killing four people and wounding 25 in the capital. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted four ballistic missiles in that attack. The source told CNN that almost all the rest were not intercepted for lack of interceptors, which suggests the four kills used up some of the last Patriots Ukraine had.

Zelensky has been warning about this shelf for months. In August he told CNN Ukraine held about a tenth of the interceptors it urgently needs. In September he announced Kyiv would receive an American licence to manufacture Patriot missiles itself. President Trump never confirmed the arrangement, and no licence followed. The interceptors are expensive, and world stocks are tight for a second reason: countries have burned through their own supplies, or are holding them back, because of the war in Iran.

All of this is now happening inside an open rupture with Washington. Last weekend Trump announced a deal to buy diesel from Russia and then announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine that Kyiv says it was not consulted on. Ukraine held its fire on Russian refineries for two to three days while Russia kept striking Ukrainian energy sites, including the attack that left 600,000 people without power. On Thursday Zelensky ended the pause, and Ukrainian drones hit the Ryazan refinery southeast of Moscow. The administration had warned Kyiv at the weekend that the United States could halt intelligence sharing and block European purchases of American weapons if the refinery strikes continued, and Zelensky has complained for two nights that Ukraine got no advance warning of Russian ballistic launches and that the high speed Starlink service its drones use was restricted without warning.

Trump answered in a Newsmax interview on Thursday. He said he is not a big fan of Zelensky, that Zelensky is more difficult to deal with than Putin, and of the refinery strikes: all he is doing is making the world oil price higher, and that is a disgrace. With American midterm elections three weeks away, the president has tied Ukrainian strikes directly to the gasoline prices his party will answer for.

Europe moved the other way. EU leaders were hosting Zelensky in Brussels on Friday, at what Reuters described as one of the most difficult moments of the war for Ukraine. Arriving at the summit, Zelensky said there are no signals from the Russian side that they are ready to end the war, and that the winter package he needs is not only energy but air defence and funding, for the rest of this year and for 2027. None of that changes the arithmetic over Kyiv tonight. The missiles that can stop a ballistic missile are gone, the argument over who is to blame is being conducted in public, and winter is coming. The picture is an illustration of a city power plant under night attack, not a photograph.