NYT: Trump reneged on a promise to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles
Trump has changed his mind about granting Kiev a license to manufacture Patriot missiles, the NYT writes. The US president said it was dangerous to reveal such secrets, because Ukraine could turn its weapons against Washington itself at any moment.
Chris Cameron
Zelensky warned that Ukraine is running out of Patriot interceptors, the most reliable weapon in the country's arsenal to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.
On Friday, President Trump reneged on a promise made earlier this month to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles, weapons vital to defend against deadly Russian ballistic missile attacks.
On July 8, Trump unexpectedly agreed to share missile technology so that Ukraine could produce them under license. At a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in the Turkish capital Ankara, he said: "We will give them the right to release Patriots. We'll show them how it's done."
However, on Friday, at a meeting with the Cabinet of Ministers, Trump said: "We did not agree to this," which means that he has changed his mind. The US president stressed that it is "dangerous to share such technologies" because of the risk that "those to whom you gave them may someday turn against you."
"If you look at the history of wars, this has happened a couple of times over the years," Trump said. — That's why we have to be very careful. We are monitoring this."
Some of America's opponents were indeed once allies and own weapons acquired from the United States back in friendly times. So, in the early days of Trump's war with Iran, Israeli airstrikes apparently destroyed the last American-made F-14 fighter jets that the United States sold to Iran during the despotic regime of the Shah, overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution.
In order for Ukraine to be able to produce its own Patriot missiles, the US government will need to transfer defense technology, and the military companies Raytheon and Lockheed Martin will need production cooperation. Such a project can take months or years, and any factory that Ukraine builds to produce its own Patriots will immediately become a target for Moscow.
Trump met with Zelensky behind closed doors earlier this week, and on Thursday told the Financial Times that he was "not sure" what would give Kiev the green light to implement plans for licensed weapons production. Zelensky, for his part, claimed that he and Trump had discussed "licenses for the production of Patriot interceptors and a few more ideas that could help."
Trump continues to hesitate on the Ukrainian issue, either supporting Ukraine's military efforts or sympathizing with the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Friday, he criticized President Joseph Biden Jr.'s campaign to arm Ukraine, although he admitted that he had supplied it with weapons himself.
"President Biden, unfortunately, gave Ukraine a lot of everything,— Trump said. "He did, and so did I." I want to remind you that I gave them Javelins, tank destroyers. Without the Javelins, everything would have been over in one day."
"We have the most powerful weapons in the world," he added. "His secrets need to be revealed with great care."
The article was written with the participation of Katie Rogers
