Trump's assurance to Zelensky
US President Donald Trump has told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he made a final decision to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot air defence missiles, Zelensky said on Friday. The assurance came during their most recent meeting, according to Zelensky, following a period of uncertainty marked by repeated changes in the US position. In July, Trump had said it would be pretty cool to grant the licences, but later reversed course, stating that Washington should be very careful before authorising such a move.[S1][S2]
Kyiv has pressed Washington to allow Patriot interceptors to be manufactured inside Ukraine, saying such weapons are vital for countering Russian ballistic missile strikes. According to Ukraine, stocks of these interceptors have run dangerously low since February, when the United States and Israel entered a war with Iran that pulled supplies of the sophisticated systems elsewhere. Zelensky stated last month that Ukraine would need one-twentieth of America's Patriot interceptor stock to survive the winter, and one-tenth to eliminate every Russian ballistic projectile.[S1]
Yet even with licences in hand, building up manufacturing would take over a year and would come too late for Kyiv's pressing requirements. Zelensky separately noted that Ukraine is developing its own anti-ballistic system, named Freya. As diplomacy aimed at restarting peace negotiations continued, the Kremlin said on Friday that a three-way meeting involving the US, Russia and Ukraine on ending the four-and-a-half-year war might be held soon. Zelensky described the gathering as technical and said it could be staged in the United Arab Emirates. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no specifics were available yet, and that Kirill Dmitriev, Russia's presidential envoy, was in the US speaking with American negotiators, with a focus on possible economic cooperation.[S1][S2]
Deadly strikes and Ukraine's response
Moscow has additionally been striking the capital with newly built jet-powered drones that have managed to evade some of the interception systems Ukraine has developed. Where attacks on Kyiv once came mostly under cover of darkness, Moscow now frequently strikes in daylight. On Friday morning, as commuters headed to work, a drone hit a residential block in the city, killing a boy of 14. Zelensky condemned the strike as absolutely savage and sickening, with no military rationale whatsoever. AFP reporters at the scene watched residents crowd around a multi-storey building whose ninth- and 10th-floor flats had been left charred.[S1]
Mykyta Sysoyev, a 23-year-old working in IT, recounted being awakened by an explosion, and said he only understood his own building had been hit after looking at the news. He described being somewhat stunned, and called the situation odd: he has grown accustomed to such attacks, yet people keep losing their lives. On the rise in drone strikes, he remarked that this amounts to a technological contest and a technological war, and that regrettably people will keep suffering while answers are sought. In the southern Odesa region, authorities said a second person died when a postal facility was struck again.[S1]
Separately, Zelensky said on Friday that Ukraine had struck two Russian oil refineries within the previous 24 hours. He said targets were hit in Bashkortostan and the Samara region, along with unspecified strikes in the Black Sea. Earlier on Friday, Russian officials reported that two people had died in overnight Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia. Russia's defence ministry claimed its air defence units had brought down 592 drones over the course of the night. Local officials said a Ukrainian drone hitting a truck in Russia's Belgorod region killed one civilian and wounded another. In the Perm region, home to a large oil refinery, Governor Dmitry Makhonin said a man had been killed in a massive drone attack.[S2]
