Ukraine’s De­fense Min­is­ter said Wednes­day his coun­try has re­ceived the U.S-made Pa­tri­ot sur­face-to-air guid­ed mis­sile sys­tems it has long craved and which Kyiv hopes will help shield it from Russ­ian airstrikes dur­ing the war.

“To­day, our beau­ti­ful Ukrain­ian sky be­comes more se­cure be­cause Pa­tri­ot air de­fence sys­tems have ar­rived in Ukraine,” De­fense Min­is­ter Olek­sii Reznikov said in a tweet.

Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have pre­vi­ous­ly said the ar­rival of Pa­tri­ot sys­tems, which Wash­ing­ton agreed to send last Oc­to­ber, would be a ma­jor boost and a mile­stone in the war against Moscow’s full-scale in­va­sion. It’s the lat­est con­tri­bu­tion from Kyiv’s West­ern al­lies, who have al­so pledged tanks, ar­tillery and some types of fight­er jets as Ukraine gears up for an ex­pect­ed coun­terof­fen­sive.

Chi­na, on the oth­er hand, in­sists it won’t help arm Rus­sia, one of its key al­lies, and on Wednes­day de­nied re­cent re­ports that Chi­nese drones have been found on Ukraine bat­tle­fields.

Bei­jing main­tains strict con­trol over the ex­port of drones in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards pre­vent­ing them from be­ing used for non­peace­ful pur­pos­es, the Com­merce Min­istry said in a state­ment.

Chi­na, which has re­peat­ed­ly crit­i­cized the U.S. and oth­er coun­tries’ sup­port for Ukraine as “adding fu­el to the fire” of the war, has an “ob­jec­tive and fair stance” and seeks peace, the state­ment in­sist­ed.

The Pa­tri­ot can tar­get air­craft, cruise mis­siles and short­er-range bal­lis­tic mis­siles. Rus­sia has used that weapon­ry to bom­bard Ukraine, in­clud­ing res­i­den­tial ar­eas and civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly the pow­er sup­ply over the win­ter.

Ukrain­ian air force spokesman Yurii Ih­nat said late Tues­day that de­liv­ery of the sys­tem would be a land­mark event, al­low­ing Ukraini­ans to knock out Russ­ian tar­gets at a greater dis­tance.

Reznikov thanked the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and the Nether­lands, with­out say­ing how many sys­tems had been de­liv­ered nor when.

Ger­many’s fed­er­al gov­ern­ment web­site on Tues­day list­ed a Pa­tri­ot sys­tem as among the mil­i­tary items de­liv­ered with­in the past week to Ukraine, and Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter An­nale­na Baer­bock con­firmed that to law­mak­ers in Berlin on Wednes­day.

Baer­bock al­so said Ger­many has de­liv­ered the sec­ond of four medi­um-range IRIS-T air de­fence sys­tems that it pledged last year.

Reznikov said he had first asked for Pa­tri­ot sys­tems when he vis­it­ed the U.S. in Au­gust 2021, five months be­fore the full-scale in­va­sion by the Krem­lin’s forces and sev­en years af­ter Rus­sia il­le­gal­ly an­nexed Ukraine’s Crimea penin­su­la. He de­scribed pos­sess­ing the sys­tem as “a dream” but said he was told in the U.S. at the time that it was “im­pos­si­ble.”

Ukrain­ian per­son­nel have been trained on the Pa­tri­ot bat­tery, which can need as many as 90 troops to op­er­ate and main­tain it.

“Our air de­fend­ers have mas­tered (the Pa­tri­ot sys­tems) as far as they could. And our part­ners have kept their word,” Reznikov wrote.

Ex­perts have cau­tioned that the sys­tem’s ef­fec­tive­ness is lim­it­ed, and it may not be a game chang­er in the war, even though it will add to Ukraine’s ar­se­nal against its big­ger en­e­my.

The Pa­tri­ot was first de­ployed by the U.S. in the 1980s. The sys­tem costs ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4 mil­lion per round and the launch­ers cost about $10 mil­lion each, an­a­lysts say. At such a cost, it’s not ad­van­ta­geous to use the Pa­tri­ot to shoot down the far small­er and cheap­er Iran­ian drones that Rus­sia has been buy­ing and us­ing in Ukraine.

Kyiv of­fi­cials have re­port­ed dai­ly civil­ian, but not mil­i­tary, ca­su­al­ties from Russ­ian bom­bard­ment.

At least four civil­ians were killed, and 27 oth­ers were in­jured in Ukraine on Tues­day and overnight, the press of­fice of Ukraine’s de­fence min­istry re­port­ed.

A 50-year-old man and 44-year-old woman were killed in a Russ­ian airstrike on a bor­der town in the north-east­ern Kharkiv re­gion, its Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said in tele­vised re­marks.

Russ­ian forces launched 12 rock­et, ar­tillery, mor­tar, tank and drone at­tacks on Ukraine’s south­ern Kher­son re­gion, its Gov. Olek­san­dr Prokudin said, killing one civil­ian at a mar­ket in the cen­tre of Kher­son, the re­gion’s name­sake cap­i­tal, and a near­by school.

A woman was killed, and an­oth­er was wound­ed in north­ern Ukraine af­ter Russ­ian forces shelled the bor­der vil­lage of Rich­ki from mul­ti­ple rock­et launch­ers, the lo­cal mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion said.

Russ­ian forces al­so fired night-time ex­plod­ing drones at Ukraine’s south­ern Ode­sa re­gion.  —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

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Sto­ry by ADAM PEM­BLE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Yuras Kar­manau in Tallinn, Es­to­nia, Christo­pher Bodeen in Bei­jing, and Geir Moul­son in Berlin, con­tributed to this re­port.