Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Kyiv has waited almost a month for US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to approve Patriot and NASAMS missiles, according to Euronews. Zelenskyy said the missiles are part of deliveries that Ukraine’s allies have already paid for, making the Zelenskyy Patriot missile delay a question of stalled purchases rather than new orders.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was awaiting approval to receive missiles for both the Patriot and NASAMS air defence systems. He said he had instructed his team to raise the issue with Washington once again. A report that first covered the delay, citing the Kyiv Independent, said the delayed missiles affect deliveries that allies have already paid for. The Kyiv Independent’s original report was not available for review, and the Monday date reported by Euronews differs from an Oct. 26 date given in the same reporting chain, with no year stated.
Ukraine receives most of its Patriot missiles through NATO’s PURL initiative, which lets allies buy US weapons. As of June 2026, allies had committed more than $6 billion through the scheme, according to NATO, as reported by Euronews. Zelenskyy has also said the US delivers only 12 Patriot interceptors to Ukraine each month. That figure comes from Zelenskyy and has no independent confirmation in the available sources.
The delay comes as Zelenskyy described the scale of Russian attacks. He said Russian forces fired 48 missiles, including ballistic missiles, at Ukraine over the past week, along with around 1,600 guided aerial bombs and close to 2,300 attack drones, according to Euronews.
The broader supply picture is under strain. A US Defence Department inspector general report said American forces fired $22.3 billion of munitions from late February to the end of June, amid the US war in Iran. Ukrainian colonel Yurii Ihnat said in an interview that the Patriot missiles used in the Middle East could have supported several years of combat operations in Ukraine. That claim is unverified and is not tied to a specific figure. Ukraine has also faced repeated outages of early-warning systems for Russian ballistic missiles, which rely on US intelligence, and problems with Starshield service that have hampered drone operations.
The two sides give competing accounts of the disruptions. American officials attributed the early-warning outages to "bad weather conditions," according to a report cited on r/worldnews. Ukrainian officials described the delays and disruptions as political pressure from Washington that could put civilian lives at risk, according to the same source.
Several gaps remain. Sources include no response from Hegseth, the Pentagon or the US government to Zelenskyy’s criticism. It is also unclear how many missiles Ukraine is waiting for: Ukrainian media reports describe a "sizeable" or "significant" number, but no figure has been confirmed. Much of the delay reporting rests on a single original outlet, the Kyiv Independent, which was not available, and an r/europe post repeats the Euronews article word for word, so it adds no independent confirmation.
Zelenskyy said he has instructed his team to raise the missile approval with Washington again, and that conversations with other countries are ongoing. No timeline for approval was given.
Sources
This article was written with AI assistance from the published reporting listed above. It is part of the World Brief daily news podcast.