The shift is that Ukraine may soon assemble Patriot interceptors at home. Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelenskyy the United States will allow it, and said Washington will show Kyiv how to make the systems. He conceded it is very technically complex, but he said he is confident Ukraine will manage quickly and be able to set up production sites where the relevant company will arrive.
The timing is no accident. Ukraine is short of the missiles it needs most, according to RBC-Ukraine’s reporting.
A shortage that keeps getting worse
Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said in May that some Patriot, NASAMS and IRIS-T launchers were only partly stocked, and that officers asked for five to ten missiles at every round of international talks. Early in July the picture darkened. Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, an adviser to the defense minister, said Ukraine has virtually no missiles able to stop Russian ballistic missiles, and that PAC-3 interceptors are scarce worldwide. On the night he spoke, Ukrainian air defense failed to stop a single ballistic missile fired at Kyiv, though interception rates for cruise and Kalibr missiles stayed high.
The Defense Ministry asked 40 partner countries to send Patriot missiles at once, in exchange for future deliveries under existing contracts. In April it had signed a record contract for hundreds of PAC-2 missiles with German support. It also took a first step toward buying about 100 missiles worth $1 billion with an EU loan. Officials admit that is still not enough.
Partners are wary of parting with stock. Beskrestnov said countries bordering Russia, Germany among them, rate the threat as high and want to build reserves in case of aggression against Poland or the Baltic states.
Weeks or years?
Poland has taken a central role. Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the technology cannot reach Ukraine without his country’s direct involvement. In Ankara, Poland, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands received the status of countries that can receive Patriot production and maintenance technology. He said missile production in Ukraine could start within a few weeks.
Ukrainian experts are far more cautious. Kostiantyn Kryvolap said launchers are not the problem, since some are made in Poland, so the question is missiles. Even in the best case, he estimated, building the production site takes a year. A single PAC-3 takes 23 to 25 months to produce. The first Ukrainian-built missiles would arrive no earlier than 2029, while contracted PAC-3 missiles are due from the United States in 2027.
Ihor Fedirko, head of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry, argued against thinking about the whole system. “Patriot is not just a missile. It is a radar, command posts, launchers, communications equipment, software, and several types of interceptor missiles,” he said. He sees a phased path, starting with maintenance, repairs and parts, then final assembly of missiles from imported components. PAC-2 and PAC-3 are separate programs, he noted, so a license for one does not cover the other.
His timeline: one to two years for repairs or assembly from ready-made modules, at least two to three years for stable serial output, and four to seven for deep localization. Germany offers a comparison. It decided to expand GEM-T production in 2024, and the facility took about two years to build.
Any Ukrainian plant would become a priority Russian target. Fedirko said the risk should be managed by spreading production across several sites, with duplicated operations and protected storage. Sensitive components could initially come from American or European partners.
Watch this space: the details of which part of the chain is actually moving to Ukraine have not been disclosed.
