Zelensky to press Trump on air defences while in Washington
Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky is due to hold important talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House, where he is hoping to firm up
Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky is due to hold important talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House, where he is hoping to firm up commitments to bolstering Kyiv's anti-ballistic missile defences. Zelensky has arrived in the US at a significant stage in Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine, with Moscow's mayor saying the capital was targeted by 390 drones in a matter of hours overnight.
The Ukrainian leader is expected to press Trump over support he gave earlier this month for Kyiv to be given a licence to produce Patriot interceptor missiles. Russia has escalated deadly ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine's capital recently, and Zelensky has said interceptors are urgently needed. Patriot missiles have been at the top of Zelensky's wish-list for some time, but after the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, these US air defence interceptors are in very short supply.
Promising a licence is one thing, but co-producing the highly sophisticated PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors on Ukrainian soil is another, because it involves a lengthy political, legal and technical
process. A delegation from US manufacturer Raytheon visited Kyiv last week and Zelensky said the defence firm had expressed "readiness to take our partnership to an even higher level".
The BriefWire