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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that his country has spent almost a month waiting on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on missiles for its Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems.
Getting into it: Zelensky said on X that he told his team to bring it up with Washington again and that Ukraine is also talking to other countries that have PAC-2 and PAC-3 Patriot missiles on hand. Ukraine gets many of its Patriots through a NATO program called PURL, where allies buy American weapons and pass them along to Kyiv, but because the interceptors are so advanced, the Pentagon has to approve the transfers first.
The Washington Post reported last week that Hegseth hasn’t rejected the shipments but hasn’t completed the steps to approve them either, even as he keeps signing off on other aid. Hegseth said last week his priority is keeping US troops stocked with interceptors, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted one shipment might still be outstanding but denied politics had anything to do with it.
The shortage is serious. Zelensky said last week Ukraine got just 24 Patriot interceptors over the previous three months, while it needs about 350 a month to keep up with Russian ballistic missile attacks, and one recent Russian barrage alone included 30 ballistic missiles. He’s asked European allies for around 300 Patriot missiles to get through the winter but has run into pushback.
Patriots are the only system Ukraine has that can reliably shoot down ballistic missiles, and analysts say Russia is trying to take advantage of the gap to hit the country’s power grid before winter, launching 140 drones and three missiles overnight into Monday.
In a statement, the Pentagon said, “No change to Department of War policy regarding any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine.”
