Ukraine has succeeded in every combat domain except for ballistic missiles, which remain a critical gap in Kyiv’s arsenal against Russia, the Ukrainian envoy to the U.S. said Thursday.
The ambassador, Olga Stefanishyna, noted that President Trump gave Ukraine the green light to manufacture its own interceptors for the Patriot missile system.
That timeline could range from 12 months to five years before a domestic Patriot missile could be deployed, and she said that means trouble.
“This winter we need missiles,” Ms. Stefanishyna said. “So many people will die over the winter” without them.
She said that on the positive front, Tuesday’s White House meeting between Mr. Trump and her president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, went smoother than last year’s acrimonious blowup in the Oval Office.
“This was a great starting point for building diplomacy,” she told reporters in a briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “We are changing the narrative, building block by block this relationship.”
That relationship has changed since the start of Ukraine’s drone strikes on targets deep inside Russia, she said.
“This is a point of the war that nobody would have expected,” she said.
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