ANKARA, Turkey — President Donald Trump heaped praise on Ukraine’s president and war effort Wednesday, speaking in unusually positive terms about Kyiv’s deep strikes inside Russia and appearing to grant one of Ukraine’s long-held requests: the ability to produce U.S.-designed Patriot air-defense missiles on Ukrainian soil.
Trump’s words on Ukraine were a dramatic departure from his tone during his first year in office, when he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ungrateful for U.S. help and accused him of “gambling with World War III.” Wednesday he spoke in admiring terms of Ukraine’s war effort and offered dramatic new assistance, first in a closed-door meeting with NATO leaders and then in a one-on-one with the Ukrainian leader.
Wednesday afternoon’s meeting was almost chummy by comparison with the earlier encounter.
Zelensky has “done an amazing job,” Trump told reporters before the pair’s bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit. “Look, he’s been very effective, and he’s had the best equipment because he’s had our equipment.”
Trump went beyond warm praise. He said the United States will allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles, the interceptors used to knock Russian missiles and drones out of the sky before they can strike cities, power plants and other civilian infrastructure.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriot missiles,” Trump said. “That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself.’ We haven’t informed the company of that yet, but that’ll work out all right.”
The president also said he was willing to send “some” Patriot interceptor missiles from the U.S. stockpile, though the numbers the Pentagon possesses have been dwindling after years of aid to Ukraine and, more recently, their use during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
For Zelensky, the issue is not abstract. Patriot systems have become one of Ukraine’s most prized defenses against Russian barrages, particularly ballistic missiles that can reach Ukrainian cities in minutes and leave civilians with little warning. They have been in short supply for years.
Kyiv has repeatedly pressed allies for more batteries and interceptors, warning that every shortage gives Moscow more room to terrorize apartment blocks, energy facilities and other civilian targets.
“As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles” instead of being handed to Ukraine, Zelensky said in a statement Monday, “Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings.”
Being able to manufacture Patriot missiles in Ukraine could eventually bolster the country’s defenses. The immediate impact may be small: setting up factories will take time, and any such facility would immediately become a top target for Russian airstrikes.
Russia launched a major air assault on Kyiv on Monday, the day before the NATO summit started, killing at least 19 people.
The U.S. move is likely to be interpreted as an aggressive action by the Kremlin, and is a departure from Trump’s previous efforts to try to keep an equal distance from Kyiv and Moscow to seek a peace deal.
U.S. military planners have typically drawn distinctions between offensive and defense weaponry in how they calibrate their aid to Ukraine, mindful of how they manage escalation. Patriots are defensive. But asked for his assessment of Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign attacking oil refineries and other targets deep in Russia, Trump praised Kyiv.
“It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that can help lead to an end” of the war, Trump said, embracing a view that Ukraine and many Europeans have long held.
European leaders who took part in the meetings embraced the new messaging.
“It’s so important that the U.S. and Trump are now taking very seriously that Ukraine has a chance and Russia is doing weaker,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in an interview. “Maybe we see the start of the end of the war. We don’t know yet.”
Zelensky, speaking alongside Trump ahead of their meeting, expressed happiness for the U.S. support.
“We understand what to do. It’s our estimation, what to do, how to win,” he said. It was his second meeting with Trump in less than a month, after seeing the U.S. leader in France on the sidelines of a meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven major economies.
Trump spoke to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky by phone on Saturday, a fact that may heighten the Russian leader’s disappointment with Trump’s approach to the conflict on Wednesday.
Putin has often sought to shape Trump’s attitudes in phone calls ahead of his meetings with other leaders, and the Kremlin described Saturday’s conversation as nearly 90 minutes long and business-like. Trump plans to speak to Putin again after Wednesday’s meeting, a U.S. official said ahead of the summit.
The extended conversation with Putin does not seem to have averted Trump’s boost to Zelensky on Wednesday.
In a separate Wednesday meeting between Zelensky and a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers, the Ukrainian leader was upbeat about his country’s chances, confident that Kyiv has turned the tide on the battlefield. Ukraine estimates that Russia is losing 30,000 troops a month while making nearly no territorial gains, according to a person who participated in the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive, closed-door conversation.
“The momentum is on the side of Ukraine at this point, and we need to do everything possible to ramp up pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table and to get a deal,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), speaking ahead of her meeting with Zelensky.
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