President Donald Trump agreed to supply licenses for Ukraine to build Patriot missile interceptors during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday at the NATO summit in TĂĽrkiye.
The move stops short of the immediate transfer of Patriots to Ukraine that Kyiv would have preferred, but nevertheless is welcome news to European officials hoping for more US help against Russia.
“We want weapons. Nobody produces enough. Whatever helps,” one European diplomat said.
The details have yet to be worked out and Trump acknowledged that the companies that produce Patriots — Lockheed Martin and RTX Corp. — hadn’t been notified of his decision.
There’s also the question of where the systems would physically be produced. Building them in Ukraine would present Russia with a new target, the diplomat said, adding that ideally production would take place in another European country, like Germany, France, or Poland.