West unable to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles
Patriot missile stocks in Europe have hit critical levels, AP reports. US and NATO forces face acute shortages of air defense interceptors capable of hitting ballistic targets, raising fears regarding NATO's vulnerability to potential Russian strikes.

A Pentagon official warned that a prolonged attack could leave NATO "taking blow after blow" due to interceptor deficits. Since 2022, the US transferred ~600 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, but the conflict with Iran depleted ~1500 of its 2330 interceptors.

Production aims for 600 missiles this year, rising to 2000 annually by 2030. A first European factory opens in Germany in September. Meanwhile, nations like Germany possess expensive systems but critically low ammunition.

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Military strike on Odessa region: "Epicenter" hypermarket is burning, port and energy facilities hit. As a result of the attack by rotary-wing drones in Odessa, the "Epicenter" shopping center caught fire. The Odessa Regional Military Administration reported a massive strike.

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“The US has rebuked European allies whose military capability gaps have been described as “a sea of red” in Nato’s colour-coded assessments, as the Trump administration weighs how quickly to withdraw American weapons and troops from the continent.

Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, met NATO ambassadors in Brussels on Thursday to discuss European defence investments in the context of a review of US military deployments in Europe due to conclude in December. He told some European allies to move faster on buying critical conventional weapons systems that the US has long provided.

The US needed to see “major efforts to step up” from European allies and create “a NATO force model that’s going to put Europe in a lasting position where it’s going to be able to lead its own defence”, Colby told reporters after the meeting.”

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Russia’s top spy has confirmed that he met CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Moscow on Tuesday .

“The meeting took place, but there was nothing unusual about it,” Sergey Naryshkin said. “I meet almost every week with the head of one special or intelligence service or another from around the world [and]the meeting with John Ratcliffe was a routine working meeting.”

Naryshkin said they discussed “a number of issues within the competence of the intelligence services,” adding that this was “a rather delicate and special area.”

Meanwhile US media spins new stories everyday.

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13th air raid alert in Kiev due to attacks over the past 24 hours, setting an absolute record for the entire war. The previous record was set on March 1, 2022, with 12 alerts in a single day.

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