“We are gonna give you a licence to make Patriots.” Donald Trump said it to Volodymyr Zelensky across a table at the NATO summit in Ankara, and added that he thought Ukraine could “produce them very quickly once we explain it.” He had not yet told the manufacturers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, but said “that’ll work out alright.”
The offer, reported by the BBC on July 8, was meant to ease a problem Kyiv could not solve itself. Russia had stepped up ballistic missile strikes, and dozens of people had died in Kyiv alone over the previous week. Earlier that week, Ukraine’s air force said a “serious shortage” of interceptors meant none of the 23 ballistic missiles fired on Sunday night was shot down. More than 20 people died in that attack.
Why the licence is harder than it sounds
Patriots are among the best air defence systems in the world and the most expensive. One battery with its missiles is worth around $1bn. Production is slow, at only 600 missiles a year according to the US Department of Defense, and the CSIS think tank says the US used more than half its stockpile in its war with Iran earlier this year. “We have Patriots, but we don’t have that many. We need them for ourselves too,” Trump said. A licence, he argued, would stop Kyiv complaining that it was not being given enough.
Zelensky had confirmed in late May that Ukraine formally asked Washington to authorise licensed production.
In Kyiv, people doubted it could happen on Ukrainian soil. Military expert Ivan Stupak, a former security service officer, told the BBC that Ukraine cannot make something so sophisticated. “Technically and legally, I think this will be deployed to European soil instead – and supervised,” he said, adding that the process could take many months. “It’s a matter of security. We have no safe place on the entire Ukrainian territory.”
Talk of a Moscow meeting
The same news conference touched on the war’s wider course. Trump acknowledged Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes on Russia, some hitting targets thousands of kilometres from the front. “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that can help lead to an end,” he said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting beside him, said the strikes on Russian refineries showed Moscow “how difficult it is to defend its airspace.”
Trump again raised a Zelensky-Putin meeting. Putin has said he would meet only in Moscow, an invitation many read as a provocation, and Trump asked the Ukrainian president whether he was prepared to go. Zelensky’s reply: “It’s difficult – there are a lot of Ukrianian drones there.”
