U.S. President Donald Trump has made a “final decision” to grant Kyiv licenses to produce Patriot air-defense missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.
The announcement could enable Ukraine to produce critical interceptors domestically amid continuing Russian attacks, at a time when Kyiv is facing a shortage of the missiles. Kyiv has reported shortages since the United States and Israel began the war in Iran at the beginning of the year. Trump publicly backed Ukrainian production in July before a series of reversals on the issue.
“At our last meeting, President Trump emphasized to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licenses for the production of Patriot missiles,” Zelensky said.
Kyiv is also working on its own anti-ballistic system, Freya. Last month, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that Britain had “agreed that defense firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine.” The missile uses shared French and British technology.
The decision would mark a long-term shift from supplying Ukraine with finite U.S. missile stocks toward building domestic production capacity, reducing Kyiv’s exposure to future changes in American inventories and political decisions. However, the licensing decision will have little immediate battlefield impact, as establishing Patriot interceptor production capacity could take more than a year and Ukraine’s interceptor shortage remains acute. In the near term, Kyiv will therefore remain dependent on Western deliveries while pursuing a broader strategy of localizing production of critical air-defense and long-range strike systems, including Freya and SCALP. (AFP+EIR)
