Trump backs away from earlier promise to let Ukraine produce Patriot missiles

WASHINGTON, DC: President Trump on Friday, July 31, backed away from an offer he made earlier this month to let Ukraine manufacture its own Patriot air defense interceptors, telling reporters during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David that handing over the underlying technology remains "a hard thing to give away."

The president's remarks contradict Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's readout of their Tuesday meeting at the White House, in which Zelenskyy said Trump agreed to provide the license. Zelenskyy, while in Washington, met with executives at Lockheed Martin, the US defense giant behind the Patriot missiles.

A stark reversal from Trump's own words weeks earlier

"We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them," Trump said.

"You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. Now, we have not agreed to that. We're talking about it. But it's a hard thing to give away that kind of technology." 

Trump's Friday comments break sharply from what he told Zelenskyy in person at the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.

"We're going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That's pretty cool, right?" Trump said at the time, adding, "This way he can't complain that we're not giving him enough. I said, make them yourself."

On Friday, he offered a different rationale for pumping the brakes, warning that countries given sensitive military technology "can someday turn on you," even as he said he didn't expect that outcome with Ukraine specifically.

He also touched on the interceptor's capabilities, noting it travels at "8,600 miles an hour" and recounting an incident in which five missiles fired at Jordan were shot down in sequence, saying "nobody else has that capacity."

Ukraine's Patriot shortage adds urgency to reversal

Zelenskyy has long raised alarm bells about the rapid depletion of US Patriot missiles, which are widely considered to be the most effective tool to counter Russian missiles and drones.

Just as Trump's Cabinet meeting was getting underway, Zelenskyy posted on X that he received a "good phone call" from Vice President JD Vance and reiterated that the Patriot missiles remain a "top priority."

"He'd like to have some Patriots," Trump said of Zelenskyy on Friday. "He'd like to have some Tomahawks, which are, you know, lethal. One offensive, one defensive."

Trump called it a "big step" to provide such a license, and then suggested that Ukraine or any other nation given the sensitive technology could one day turn and use such weapons against the US.

"And I don't think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you. You know, that is possible," Trump said.

"So, we have to be very careful," he added.

Trump said he spoke to Zelenskyy, presumably during his visit to the White House earlier this week, about the weapons systems.

"I also spoke to him about let's get this war over with," Trump said.

Trump said both Ukraine and Russia will have to make concessions to end the yearslong war, which started when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

For now, though, the specific commitment Zelenskyy believed he'd secured just days earlier, a US license to build Patriots on Ukrainian soil, appears to be back in limbo.