Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for urgent action to begin domestic production of Patriot air-defence missiles, after US President Donald Trump granted political approval for a manufacturing licence on the sidelines of this week's NATO summit in Ankara, Turkiye. Speaking to reporters on Thursday after returning from the summit, Zelenskyy said the political hurdle had been cleared and that technical teams from Ukraine's ministries of defence and foreign affairs must now move quickly to finalise the remaining details with Washington.
The Patriot — a US-made surface-to-air missile system — and its PAC-3 interceptor are among the few Western weapons capable of shooting down the ballistic missiles Russia has increasingly fired at Ukrainian cities. Ukraine has been consuming Patriot interceptors faster than they can be supplied, and global stocks have been further depleted by the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. Zelenskyy had been pressing Washington for months to allow Ukraine to produce the missiles itself. At a joint press conference in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump said: "We're going to give a licence to you to make Patriots. This way, you can't complain that we're not giving them enough." Trump acknowledged that only two or three countries in the world are considered technologically capable of producing Patriots, and said Ukraine was among them.
However, experts and Ukrainian officials caution that the decision will not resolve Ukraine's immediate air-defence crisis. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's defence minister, warned that setting up domestic production will take many months, with some subcontracted components requiring 12 to 24 months to manufacture, and the missile's engine potentially taking up to 30 months to produce. According to the US Foreign Policy Research Institute, agreements with Patriot manufacturers Raytheon and Lockheed Martin — the latter producing around 600 interceptors per year — would also be required before production could begin. For comparison, Germany received permission in 2024 to build a Patriot production facility, with its first missiles not expected until next year. American defence contractors reportedly had not been informed of Trump's announcement in advance, though Trump dismissed concerns, saying: "We have great power over the companies. It will be fine."
The urgency is stark. Russia has intensified its missile and drone strikes in recent weeks, killing more than 50 people in Kyiv alone this month. On the night of 5–6 July, Ukrainian air defences failed to intercept a single ballistic missile fired at the capital — a city previously considered the country's best-protected. Defence analysts note that, in the short term, the licence agreement is unlikely to change the battlefield calculus. "There will be at minimum a year before Ukraine has its own Patriot missiles. Until then, we will be dealing with shortages globally," said Patrick Bolder of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. Bolder suggested Zelenskyy's more immediate hope may be that allied nations feel more willing to transfer Patriots from their own stockpiles, knowing those reserves could eventually be replenished with Ukrainian-produced missiles.
The announcement came amid a notably warmer tone between Trump and Zelenskyy, in sharp contrast to their tense Oval Office meeting earlier this year. Trump praised Zelenskyy for doing "an amazing job" and reiterated his commitment to brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, describing recent weeks as showing "a lot of progress". NATO members also pledged 140 billion euros in support for Ukraine at the Ankara summit. Whether the Patriot licence translates into meaningful relief on the ground remains an open question — but for Kyiv, it represents a strategic milestone in its effort to secure long-term air-defence self-sufficiency.