Ukraine’s Patriots will make America safer

President Donald Trump announced that he will grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles. This decision is a welcome shift in U.S. policy that will serve American and Ukrainian interests alike. Both the United States and Europe will be safer as a result.

“We’re going to give you a license to make Patriots,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during Wednesday’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. “I think they can produce them very quickly once we explain it,” he added.

Zelensky said he was “grateful for the strong emphasis placed on strengthening Ukraine’s air defense to better protect people’s lives.”

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s civilian population with missile attacks since invading in February 2022 and has intensified them.

From September 2022 through September 2024, Russia launched 11,466 missiles at Ukraine, 83.5% of which were intercepted, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But Russia’s daily barrages more than doubled after Trump returned to the Oval Office. Russia launched 27,158 strikes from mid-January through mid-July 2025. By contrast, it launched 11,614 missiles during the final six months of President Joe Biden’s term, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.

The reason for the dramatic increase is that Russia is getting desperate.

Moscow thought it could conquer Ukraine in a matter of days, according to a Royal United Services Institute analysis of captured Russian documents. But President Vladimir Putin’s ambition to reconstitute the old czarist empire was thwarted by poor logistics and an unexpectedly fierce Ukrainian defense.

For more than four years, Ukrainians have held the line against a nation with a population three times the size of their own and an economy 10 times larger. In a war of attrition, the odds seem to favor Russia.

But wars are not won by statistics alone. Willpower can be decisive, and Ukraine has it in spades. In recent months, Ukraine has scored impressive battlefield victories, offsetting Moscow’s superior manpower and materiel.

Ukrainian innovation in tactics and weaponry is central to its recent success. The Russians are “finding it more difficult to defend their own airspace,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Ankara, “and what we hope that means is that’s going to create the space now to negotiate the end of this war.”

Russia has stalled on the battlefield; its costly assaults have not produced significant territorial gains. Moscow is also finding it “harder to recruit new personnel to make good on its huge casualties, which are currently estimated at more than 30,000 a month,” according to a July 3 report by the Lowy Institute.

Russia has targeted civilians throughout the war, firing missiles and drones at hospitals, schools, orphanages, and even animal shelters. These have increased in intensity but also changed in character. In May, Moscow shifted from focusing primarily on energy infrastructure to targeting critical water supplies and gas stations.

Zelensky is right. Trump granting Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot interceptors will save lives. It comes at what could be a pivotal moment in the war and represents a welcome reversal from previous reports that the administration was determined to slow or end aid to Ukraine.

Yet it could take months or years for licensed production to begin. In 2024, for example, Germany began developing a less advanced version of the Patriot, the PAC-2 GEM-T interceptor, but production is not expected to begin until 2027.

The United States itself has struggled with critical munitions shortages, including shortages of Patriot interceptors. America’s defense industrial base is ill-equipped for today’s threat environment and has shown itself unable to produce enough essential weapons within budget.

A growing defense partnership with Ukraine could help. Ukraine’s economy is on a war footing, and it shows. In 2025, the United States produced fewer than 100,000 drones while Ukraine produced more than 4 million.

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The United States can learn from Ukraine about defense production and battlefield tactics.

The decision to aid Ukraine with Patriot missiles could strengthen America’s defense industrial base. But it will certainly send a critical message to friends and foes alike: The United States will help those who help themselves, and it has no illusions about who its enemies are.