Dear Mr. President Joe Biden,

With this petition, we, the Ukrainian people and all those who sympathize with Ukrainians in their struggle to save their country and all of humanity from the existential threat posed by the Russian regime, ask you to consider our request for extremely urgent deliveries of Patriot MIM-104 air defense systems for Ukraine.

On the morning of October 17, in the center of Kyiv, under the rubble of a residential building destroyed by an Iranian kamikaze drone, rescuers found the lifeless bodies of a man and a woman. A deadly drone launched by Russia overtook Viktoria in the arms of her husband Bogdan. Shahed-136 killed three people overnight – a father, a mother and their unborn child, who was to see the light in three months. Mourning the death of her employee, colleagues called her "an incredibly kind and sympathetic person" who "never showed weakness."

Members of this family are among the many victims of Vladimir Putin's new strategy of terror. In his public comment on October 10, 2022, he openly admitted that the target of his attacks from now on is the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine. On that day, Russian aircraft and ships sent more than 80 missiles and dozens of Iranian kamikaze drones against Ukrainian cities. Since then, Russian massive strikes with these long-range weapons have not stopped.

After two weeks of such uninterrupted barbarism perpetrated by the Kremlin, dozens of Ukrainian civilians were killed and hundreds were injured, and the Ukrainian energy sector lost over a third of its capacity, which has already led to serious power outages throughout the country. The Russian authorities and their propaganda servants do not hide the fact that they intend to leave the Ukrainian people without water, light and heat in winter conditions. Moscow is deliberately preparing for Ukraine a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented scale. For this reason, Russian military factories that produce cruise missiles are working around the clock, and the Russian authorities have agreed with Iran to supply ballistic missiles and a new batch of killer-drones.

Ukrainian forces shoot down up to 70 percent of all missiles and drones, but this is clearly not enough. Ukraine's air defense system consists mainly of obsolete Soviet anti-aircraft missile systems. The problem is that they are not very effective against missiles, these systems are not enough to cover most of the Ukrainian territory, and shells for them are not produced anywhere in the world, so it is only a matter of time before their supply is exhausted.

The United States and its allies have promised Ukraine many advanced anti-missile and anti-drone systems. The first defense systems of this type, such as the advanced German IRIS-T, have already been deployed in Ukraine and show high efficiency. The Ukrainian people are grateful for this, as well as for all the Western military assistance that helps Ukrainians liberate their territories and defend their sovereignty. However, due to production, technological and logistical obvious constraints, the delivery of Western air defense systems to Ukraine will take months and years.

Unfortunately, Ukraine does not even have a few weeks, because rockets and Iranian kamikaze planes are falling on the heads of Ukrainians right now, and the cold has already come. The crisis of the Ukrainian energy system will lead and is already leading to the suffering of millions of the country's inhabitants and will force them to leave their homeland. This circumstance, in turn, will lead to a new migration crisis in Europe, which will again have to admit new millions of Ukrainian refugees. Because of the war, Ukrainian economy shrank by a third and risks losing another third due to the ongoing Russian rocket bombardment.

Dear Mr. President, these difficult circumstances force us, on behalf of the entire Ukrainian people, to ask you to radically speed up the process of supplying air defense systems to Ukraine. Let's be blunt: the Ukrainian people need American Patriot MIM-104 systems, and not in a few years, but right now and today. This is not a matter of whim, but a matter of the physical survival of millions of people, the survival of a nation and the survival of a sovereign power fighting not only for itself, but for Europe, for the United States, for the rules-based international order and for the ideals on which it is based. In the case of the defeated of Ukraine, the world to which we are accustomed will also defeated – a world in which goodness, justice, equality and law triumph – and in its place will come the kingdom of bloody chaos and war of all against all. This is what Vladimir Putin and his a tiny number of allies around the world are striving for. And this is what we must not allow.

According to open data, more than 1,100 Patriot launchers are currently in service with the United States, and almost 200 more have been transferred to foreign powers. Ukraine urgently needs at least 5 percent of this amount – several dozen units – in order to form a dome that could guarantee the protection of the country from enemy missiles aiming at Ukrainian high-rise buildings, playgrounds and power plants. If the desired number of Patriot launchers are in reserve, then transferring them to Ukraine would be the best use for them. If they are not in stock, then the Ukrainian people will be immensely grateful for the possibility of transferring such systems from the least disturbing directions to the direction where the issue of the future of all mankind is being decided today – to Ukraine. To Ukraine that Putin longs to destroy just for the sake of proving that the very idea of ​​democracy is supposedly untenable, and any attempts to build it will be punished and doomed to a fiasco.

We understand that Ukrainians will not have time to master the Patriot in a week. However, is this a reason to delay deliveries and, moreover, to refuse them altogether? Of course, these systems will require the training of large groups and entire battalions over the course of months. What could be the way out of this situation? Probably the best way is to move these systems to Ukraine as soon as possible, along with Western experts (not necessarily regular military of the NATO) able to maintain them to protect the Ukrainian skies while the Ukrainians are trained in the use of Patriot. This is not about working on the front line, but about placing them in the largest Ukrainian agglomerations, located far from the combat zone, where Western specialists will not be endangered.

The Ukrainian military has already shown how quickly they master Western military equipment and how effectively they use it. The tools, which in the standard mode require a three-month preparation period, the Ukrainian military begin to successfully use within a couple of weeks after the initial familiarization with them. Thanks to the support of Washington and European capitals, Ukrainian soldiers managed to turn the tide of the war against an enemy many times superior to Ukraine in economic and military resources. Overwhelmed by the huge losses of his army, Vladimir Putin realized that he was unable to defeat the Ukrainians on the battlefield, so he switched to vile terrorist attacks against pregnant women in the center of the Ukrainian capital. This is the last and basest argument in this bloody massacre, where he staked the worthless existence of his entire misanthropic regime.

What does it mean to leave the Ukrainian people without a Patriot in these conditions? First, it means giving Putin carte blanche to continue the actual genocide of the Ukrainian civilian population. Secondly, it means undermining the reputation of the US and NATO as the main stabilizers of the international order and protection of the suffering. On the contrary, the urgent transfer of Patriot to the Ukrainian people will not only save many innocent lives, but will also demonstrate to Putin that he no longer has any options to continue this bloodthirsty mass.

We understand that we are asking for what seems impossible, but until recently it seemed impossible to transfer much less complex systems to Ukraine, and the world's leading experts predicted Kyiv's fall in three days. Now, after nine months of a full-scale Russian invasion, former US Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges argues that the current Ukrainian Armed Forces could be among the top three NATO armies, and Putin put his hand into his last reserve when he announced mobilization, although she brings him nothing but another shame. Putin's defeat is inevitable, and this is obvious to everyone. The question is what price will the Ukrainians pay for their victory, who already paid tens of thousands of lives, millions of refugees and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage for this horrific war.

Immediate and unconditional deliveries of the Patriot (or any other systems like MIM-23 Hawk), along with other advanced air defense systems, will be an act of supreme humanism for Ukrainians and the only correct response to the actual genocide that the dying Russian autocracy is doing against Ukrainians. The systems we ask for will not kill anyone, because Russian aircraft have not appeared over Ukrainian cities for a long time, located tens of kilometers from the front line. But these systems can save countless lives by protecting them from tens and hundreds of missiles that are right now waiting for the Russian command to give the next order to fire.

The words spoken about Victoria, who "never showed weakness, are the words that can be said about the entire Ukrainian people. He survived in an unequal battle and is now winning. It cannot be broken by missile attacks. However, even the strongest cannot fight if they have nothing to fight with. Ukrainians desperately need Patriot systems that can protect them from Armageddon, in the hell of which tens of millions of Ukrainians fall asleep and wake up every day, being forced to respond to endless air raids. Every day of delay is another unborn Ukrainian child. We can't wait any longer. We have no time.

Mr. President Biden, we are eternally grateful for everything that you and your team have already done and are going to do for Ukraine, but now we ask you for special help – help that no one but you can provide to Ukraine.

With deep respect,
signatories