Russia is big winner as Iran war drains supplies that Ukraine needs

Russia is one of the biggest winners in the early days of the largest U.S. military confrontation in decades, as Iranian missiles deplete stocks of Patriot interceptors that Ukraine needs for its defense.

- Bojan Pancevski & Drew Hinshaw

Eyen before the Iran campaign, production bottlenecks in the U.S.-made Patriot sy stem had drained Ukraine’s reserves and left European allies on yearslong waiting lists. Those shortfalls have allowed Russia to punch through gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses, de vastating its power infrastructure and casting Ukrainian cities into blackouts.

U.S. and Gulf states have fired hundreds of interceptors in the opening days of the war to repel Iranian missile and drone barrages. Gulf states possess only days of interceptors under sustained attack, analysts estimate, potentially forcing Washington to pull from Indo-Pacific and other regional stockpiles, weakening its forward posture elsewhere.

Iran had fired more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 dronessince thestart of the campaign, Gen, Dan Caine , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. He said that the U.S. has sufficient munitions for the Iran operation.

Lockheed Martin’s entire 2025 U.S. output of its most advanced interceptor, the PAC-3, was just over 600. At least two Patriot interceptors are typically required to destroy a single ballistic missile—often followed by athird or more if the first pair fails. Production of a single, multimillion-dollar interceptor is limited and can take months, with components coming from across the U.S. andas far afield as Spain.

“For us, this is a matter of life,” include strengthening Kyiv’s air defenses, according to European and Ukrainian negotiators.

Russia isalso firing each day hundreds of Shahed-type killer drones first developed in Iran, which Moscow is able to mass-produce after a 2023 technology-transfer deal with Tehran.