(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday reversed course on his offer earlier this month to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air defense systems, saying during a Cabinet meeting that “we have not agreed to that.”
“We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them,” Trump said as he gathered his top officials at Camp David. “You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. Now, we have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it. But it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.”
The president’s remarks contradict Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s readout of their Tuesday meeting at the White House, in which Zelenskyy said Trump agreed to provide the license. Zelenskyy, while in Washington, met with executives at Lockheed Martin, the U.S. defense giant behind the Patriot missiles.
Trump’s Friday comments are also a departure from his own public message to Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Turkey in early July.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool, right?” Trump said to the Ukrainian president the time, adding: “This way he can’t complain that we’re not giving him enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself.'”
Zelenskyy has long raised alarm bells about the rapid depletion of U.S. Patriot missiles, which are widely considered to be the most effective tool to counter Russian missiles and drones.
Just as Trump’s Cabinet meeting was getting underway, Zelenskyy posted on X that he received a “good phone call” from Vice President JD Vance and reiterated that the Patriot missiles remain a “top priority.”
“He’d like to have some Patriots,” Trump said of Zelenskyy on Friday. “He’d like to have some Tomahawks, which are, you know, lethal. One offensive, one defensive.”
Trump called it a “big step” to provide such a license, and then suggested that Ukraine or any other nation given the sensitive technology could one day turn and use such weapons against the U.S.
“And I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you. You know, that is possible,” Trump said.
“So, we have to be very careful,” he added.
Trump said he spoke to Zelenskyy, presumably during his visit to the White House earlier this week, about the weapons systems.
“I also spoke to him about let’s get this war over with,” Trump said.
Trump said both Ukraine and Russia will have to make concessions in order to end the yearslong war, which started when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“I said, ‘You got to get this war over.’ I think he wants to make a deal, and I think Putin wants to make a deal. But there’s a lot of dislike, as you probably notice,” Trump said. “Well, nobody wants concessions, but they’re both going to have to make some concessions. I mean, you got to make a deal.”
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