MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky, in pleading for missiles, is trying to shift responsibility for their shortage onto US President Donald Trump, Yulia Mendel, Zelensky's former press secretary, said.

According to Mendel, her former boss requested 300 Patriot surface-to-air missiles from Washington, or 36-40% of the entire US stockpile, but "even that quantity would have been critically insufficient for Ukraine."

"Today Zelensky publicly states that Ukraine will be able to seal its skies against Russian missiles with only 10% of US stockpiles. <...> European countries refuse to supply their own missiles, and the Middle East is likely to refuse as well. Zelenskyy’s request is therefore nothing more than an attempt to shift responsibility onto Trump," she wrote on X.

At the NATO summit in early July, the US leader said that Ukraine could receive a license to manufacture Patriot systems in the future. Bloomberg noted that launching domestic production of Patriot interceptors would take a long time and would not allow Kiev to replenish its stockpiles quickly. At the end of July, Trump questioned the prospects of transferring technology for the production of Patriot systems and their missiles to Kiev. He noted that the US should be very careful about issuing licenses to other countries to manufacture US weapons.

According to European experts, the main problem with Patriot missiles is not their cost but their extremely limited supply. The stockpiles were depleted, including during the US war with Iran. Limited production capacity for these missiles, which are manufactured only in the United States, provides no guarantee that Kiev would be able to obtain them in the foreseeable future, even if a contract is signed.