特朗普承诺乌克兰将获得制造爱国者拦截机的“许可证”

ANKARA — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States will give a license to Ukraine for Patriot missiles as he said both Russia and Ukraine want to see the war settled.

“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving ‘em enough,” Trump said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Ankara.

“It’s a defensive weapon, which I like better than an offensive weapon,” Trump said.

The U.S. president’s comments were quickly picked up by Russian state media, which keeps a keen eye on all news coming out of the NATO summit in Ankara.

Initial reporting was factual and brief, relaying the American president’s decision verbatim. State-aligned media had previously panned the idea as reckless and amplified Western skeptical voices calling the move a risk to U.S. national security over concerns the technology could fall into Russian hands.

Russia’s foreign ministry has criticized the Trump administration for continuing to back Ukraine, with Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that Washington was giving up its role as an “honest broker” and shifting back toward more decisively supporting Kyiv.

Reporting by the FT from late June indicated that this was causing disillusionment with Trump amongst Putin’s close associates.

Wednesday’s announcement comes just days after Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov dropped Russia’s longstanding euphemism of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Instead, speaking to Russian media on Sunday, it had become a “real war” due to the involvement of Western nations, Peskov said.

While Trump was unambiguous in Ankara about the licensing offer, some specifics would remain to be worked out with the U.S. contractors involved. It was unclear, for example, which type of interceptor missile - the simpler PAC-2 or the more capable PAC-3 - Trump intends to allow Ukraine to build.