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President Zelenskyy says Donald Trump gave a verbal greenlight for domestic missile production, though no formal treaty has been signed.
At the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Ukrainian president said his sit-down with Donald Trump on Tuesday had produced the answer Kyiv has been chasing since summer.
Air defense, and the interceptors that feed it, are the single most contested item in Ukraine’s aid file heading into a fourth winter of war.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, September 25, Zelenskyy said Trump had told him: “Yes, I have made the final decision. Ukraine will receive the licenses to produce Patriot missiles,” according to Kyiv Post’s account of the briefing.
Zelenskyy did not say whether the authorization would cover PAC-2 or PAC-3 interceptors, or when licenses would be issued.
No formal agreement, production framework, or timeline was signed alongside the announcement. As of Wednesday, the US State Department told Deutsche Welle that talks were still under way and no final decision had been announced, a discrepancy Kyiv Post flagged in its own reporting.
Trump already walked back once
The verbal-only nature of the commitment matters because Trump made, then withdrew, a version of the same pledge two months ago.
At the NATO summit in Turkey on July 8, he told reporters, “We are gonna give a license to you to make Patriots… This way you can’t complain that we are not giving you enough.”
Three weeks later he pulled back. On July 31, at Camp David, Trump said, “We have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology,” as Kyiv Independent reported at the time.
Concerns about proliferating US missile technology were the stated reason.
Zelenskyy’s message on Friday was that the reversal has itself been reversed. Ukraine’s own read on when domestic production could actually start is more sober: the president told journalists that “God willing, we will start this project in a year to a year and a half.”
Raytheon, the Patriot’s US manufacturer, is ready to take part in the arrangement, Zelenskyy said in remarks carried by Defense Express.
The winter gap the license does not fill
Even if the license comes through on paper, it does nothing for the coming months. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine needs a winter package of 300 Patriot interceptors, against an Air Force request of 360, warning that stocks are nearly exhausted as Russia steps up ballistic-missile strikes on the power grid.
Europe is trying to fill some of that hole with money. On September 11, the European Commission approved 6.1 billion euros for Ukraine’s air and missile defense and other defense needs, including PAC-3 interceptors for the Patriot systems Kyiv already operates. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “Ukraine can now also purchase the Patriot equipment it needs to better protect its skies from Russia’s indiscriminate attacks.”
That funding covers hardware Ukraine can buy now. Domestic Patriot production, if it survives contact with US export controls, would begin arriving toward the end of 2027 at the earliest, on Zelenskyy’s own timeline.
