Ukraine expects to obtain the technical capability to produce missiles for US Patriot air defense systems by the end of 2026, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
"We are working on Patriot licenses. We had an agreement, as you correctly said, at the political level. We expect that by the end of 2026 we will have the technical capability for Ukrainian teams to produce our own missiles — American missiles of our own capability," Zelensky said at the Ukraine–Southeast Europe Summit on Wednesday.
The president also recalled that Ukraine had reached agreements with France and Italy on developing missile production for European air defense systems.
"We have a separate agreement with the European Union, namely with France and Italy, because they provide authorization for the production of SAMP/T. We reached an agreement with the French side, and the Italian side supported the relevant decisions. We agreed on missiles for SCALP, Aster 30, and also on the next-generation SAMP/T system," Zelensky said.
Zelensky added that Ukraine is also implementing its own FREYJA European anti-ballistic system project, under which Ukraine is developing the launcher and missile, while partners are expected to provide other components, primarily radars.
"Ukraine is building the launcher and the missile. We still lack other components, first and foremost radars. We have now united eight countries around this initiative, and the companies capable of quickly resolving the radar issue from a technological perspective have already been identified," he said.
According to the president, coordination of work on the anti-ballistic defense initiative is being carried out by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.
"The NSDC brought together the anti-ballistic coalition. The NSDC Secretary (Rustem Umerov — IF-U) was responsible for this. We have a trilateral format: there is a leader, there is a national security adviser — in our case, the NSDC Secretary — and there are companies responsible for providing different parts of the anti-ballistic system," Zelensky said.
He noted that the first meeting in this format had already taken place in France, with the next stage being to agree on the project implementation timeline. According to Zelensky, successful testing of Ukrainian-developed systems remains an important issue.
