US President Donald Trump has offered Ukraine the right to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, a pledge made at the NATO summit in Ankara on Thursday. Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States would grant a licence for Kyiv to manufacture the batteries, which are key to intercepting ballistic rockets fired by Russia.
Patriot systems are among the world’s most advanced air‑defence platforms, with a single battery and its accompanied missiles costing around $1 billion. Their production, however, runs at a limited pace, with only 600 units produced annually by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Trump said that while he has not yet briefed the manufacturers, the licence would be arranged “once we explain it.”
The United States has been reluctant to part with its existing stockpile; over half of the Patriot missiles were used during the Iran conflict earlier this year. Trump acknowledged that the U.S. needed its own batteries for its defence needs, but emphasized that Ukraine urgently required them to counter Russia’s ballistic missile strikes on its territory, including outrageously deadly attacks on Kyiv.
Despite the president’s assurances, military experts caution that Ukraine currently lacks the infrastructure to produce such advanced munitions. Former security service officer Ivan Stupak explained that while the Patriot interceptors would be invaluable, the sophistication of the technology means production would likely need to occur on European soil, in a supervised environment, and could take many months.
In addition to the missile licence discussion, Trump highlighted Ukraine’s recent long‑range offensive strikes on Russian targets that have reached distances of several hundred kilometres beyond the frontline. He described the strikes as an escalation that might lead to a resolution of the conflict, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised them for demonstrating the difficulty for Moscow to defend its airspace.
Trump also floated the idea of a meeting between Zelensky and Vladimir Putin as a potential path toward ending the war. While Putin reportedly only wants such talks in Moscow, Zelensky was quoted as teasing that the Ukraine drone strikes would make it hard for Moscow to welcome him.
