Patriot missile licences for Kyiv – let’s hope so

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that, during his meeting with Donald Trump in New York earlier this week, the U.S. President told him he had decided to grant Ukraine licenses to produce missiles for the Patriot air defense systems: “There are specific agreements in place. At our last meeting, President Trump reiterated to me: ‘Yes, I have made the final decision: Ukraine will receive the licences to produce Patriot missiles’”. In conversations Zelensky had following his bilateral meeting with Trump, he had already revealed that he had received a favourable response regarding the Patriot interceptors, but the US State Department had subsequently clarified that the United States had not yet taken a final decision on granting the licences to Ukraine. This is not a new development: back in July in Ankara, at the NATO summit, the only piece of good news had been the US willingness to grant these essential licences, but a couple of weeks later, Trump himself had stated that the United States “must be very cautious” on the matter, and the licences had not been mentioned since.

We have learnt that this American president’s statements cannot be trusted, but today Zelensky said he had explained to him in detail how Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians have changed, the new weapons being used – which are much faster and fly at low altitude – and Vladimir Putin’s relentless pursuit of his targets ever since he realised that Ukraine’s air defences are inadequate. Nor is this anything new; the campaign to raise awareness of Putin’s terror has been going on for some time and has met with little success, given that within a year and a half the Trump Administration had completely disengaged from Ukraine. However, there are no substitutes for the Patriot interceptors, and we have no choice but to press the issue, in the hope that this time Trump will not go back on his word and will begin to realise that there are not many allies as willing, innovative and reliable as Ukraine.