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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has wrapped up meetings with President Trump and US senators in Washington, leaving with a commitment on licenses to co-produce Patriot interceptor missiles.
Getting into it: The first meeting took place at the White House, with Zelensky spending just over an hour in the Oval Office alongside Trump. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “positive and productive.” A senior Ukrainian official called it “very practical.”
Zelensky came in asking for two things: anti-ballistic missiles and a way to restart diplomacy with Russia. He told Fox News host Sean Hannity that night that he walked out with the first one. “He accepted that he will give us (Patriot) licenses, and then I had meeting with representatives of production, very strong military companies of the United States. I hope that we will do co-production,” Zelensky said.
Trump posted photos from the meeting afterward with a note saying that many things were discussed and that it went very well. Patriot interceptors have sat at the top of Zelensky’s ask list for years, and Trump first floated the co-production licenses at the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.
The second meeting took place with US lawmakers at the Capitol and ran close to an hour. His pitch to lawmakers was specific: Ukraine can already knock down drones, and what it cannot do is stop ballistic missiles. Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said Zelensky described a battlefield tilting Ukraine’s way.
Kyiv is signing up about 30,000 recruits a month while Russia takes in 40,000, and Zelensky’s argument was that better technology covers the difference. “They’re inflicting much more casualties on the Russians than the Russians are on the Ukrainians. The ratio is like eight to one, which is remarkable,” Hoeven said.
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi was more measured, saying Zelensky “realizes we’re not out of the woods yet. The momentum is in Ukraine’s favor, but winter’s coming on in just a few months and there’s much more to do.”
