The Russian paper Kommersant on May 17 in an article titled "Hole in the missile shield umbrella" said as follows:

The experts in their reports claimed that the missile shield in Europe cannot fulfill its military mission in the near future as it was built entirely on a political plan.

Its main defect is that the operation range of radars is small and is weak in target detecting capability. The radars of the above-said missile field are not yet capable of detecting launches of ballistic missiles and tracking them at their early stages.

This combat system, however, had already been deployed in Europe before being tested in the U.S. Moreover, the hasty deployment of elements of the missile shield led to sharp increase of expenses and their low effectiveness. Consequently, this constantly spawned difficulties in the qualitative aspect of their elements.