KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Group of Seven summit in France that he would consider letting Ukraine build its own Patriot interceptor missiles, the first time Washington has signaled openness to a request Kyiv has made since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Ukraine previewed the shift weeks before Trump’s signal proved the point. Asked by Defense News earlier this month in Kyiv whether its growing web of weapons deals was changing its hand in the peace talks, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine and the country’s former military intelligence chief, said Kyiv no longer comes to the table empty-handed.
“Ukraine is not a leader that only asks — we are partners who are ready to offer something that will be interesting,” he said. “We will take on what is actually interesting for the USA.”
For most of the war, Ukraine has relied on Western weapons transfers to hold the line. That is starting to change as the United States looks to Ukraine’s interceptor drones to fill gaps in American air defenses that have been put to the test during the Iran war.
“Licenses for the production of our missiles are being perceived positively by the American side for the first time,” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday, describing his conversation with Trump in Évian.
Two days later in Brussels, Zelenskyy’s defense minister signed a separate agreement with Germany to jointly develop anti-ballistic missile defenses, the second major weapons-production deal with a key Western ally in a week.
The war, meanwhile, is grinding toward a possible ceasefire by September, a window Zelenskyy has called the effective deadline for serious talks that have effectively been on hold since February. Ukraine is approaching it with something to trade rather than only a list of needs, according to Budanov.
Some officials still see Ukraine’s stronger negotiating hand as a matter of debate. Trump said in March the U.S. does not need Ukrainian help with drone defense.
“We know more about drones than anybody,” he told Fox News while discussing Kyiv’s offer to share its counter-drone expertise.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, said over Victory Day last month that the war was “coming to an end,” with victory “always” Russia’s.
Budanov waved off the Russian leader’s optimism as “a classic special information operation.” Putin “will always say they’re good even if they’re collapsing,” he said.
Budanov has bristled at the supplicant framing more broadly. Pushing back at the same briefing on a question about when the war’s hot phase might end, he rejected the idea that Ukraine’s fate rests on what others decide to hand it.
“Stop diminishing our role as if someone has to give us something, tell us something, donate something,” he said.
The leverage is real, in his account, because Russia has exhausted its alternatives. Moscow cannot win the war by force and knows it, he said, which leaves the negotiating table as its only way out.
Ukraine underscored that argument last week, launching its largest-ever drone offensive on Moscow — striking the Russian capital’s main oil refinery twice in a single week — in a deepening campaign against Russian energy infrastructure that Budanov described as designed in part to push the Kremlin toward the negotiating table.
“Both Russia and the United States clearly understand that without resolving our situation, they cannot openly restart their economic relationship,” Budanov said.
On the battlefield, Ukraine’s interceptor technology is improving fast. Ukrainian air defenses downed roughly 92% of the Shaheds and other attack drones Russia launched in May, up from 80% in December 2024, the Defense Ministry reported.
Counting missiles as well as drones, the General Staff put the May intercept rate at more than 88%. Early-June attacks have run at similar levels. Ukraine intercepted 92% of a 272-drone barrage on June 6 alone, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.
Interceptor drones are driving more of those kills. Their share of downed Shaheds has doubled over the past four months, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said May 20. Ukraine produced 100,000 interceptor drones in 2025, a total Fedorov said it doubled in the first four months of 2026 alone.
The deal that would formalize the exchange remains unsigned. A draft memorandum drawn up by the State Department and Ukrainian Ambassador Olha Stefanishyna was completed in May but awaits Trump’s signature amid what CBS News reported as a “lack of buy-in” from senior Pentagon and White House officials.
What shifted the ground beneath that deal is Iran. The war there has freed Washington to refocus on Ukraine, Budanov said, and it exposed the precise shortfall Kyiv is positioned to fill.
The U.S. fired between 1,060 and 1,430 Patriot interceptors during the Iran war at roughly $3.9 million apiece, according to an April CSIS analysis — more than the roughly 600 Patriots Ukraine received from all its Western allies combined across four years of war.
That is the missile Ukraine wants to build. U.S. plants turn out only 60 to 65 Patriot interceptors a month, a rate Zelenskyy told CBS News is “nothing” for today’s challenges. Licensing production to allies, he argued, is the only way to close the gap.
What Ukraine offers in return is the other half of the air-defense problem: Its interceptor drones, built to knock down the cheap Shaheds that swarm Ukrainian cities nightly, run $1,000 to $2,500 apiece, and a new system automates 95% of the intercept, Fedorov said this month.
Ukraine spent more than four years asking for weapons from partners to survive. Now, it is taking the war to Moscow and betting that the pressure forces Russia back to the negotiation table before the September window closes.
“Winning by military means is not working, and they know it perfectly well,” Budanov said of the Russians. “It means you need to negotiate.”
Katie Livingstone is the Ukraine correspondent for Defense News and Military Times. Based in Kyiv, she has covered Russia’s full-scale invasion since its first days. She is a former Fulbright fellow whose award-winning work has appeared in outlets across Europe and the U.S.
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