Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Trump Agrees to Support Ukraine's L...

Ukraine could launch domestic production of missiles for Patriot air defense systems within approximately one to one and a half years, following U.S. support for the necessary licensing

Trump has agreed again to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles. I wonder if he will renege like last time?

It will take time to get this production going but its more a long term objective for Ukraine

18 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Trump has agreed again to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles. I wonder if he will renege like last time?

It will take time to get this production going but its more a long term objective for Ukraine

I wonder if they will bother producing them? They are costly, so it might be more cost-effective for Ukraine to just keep mass producing drones to take down the Russian economy instead of trying to intercept inbound missiles.

The consequences of trying to take down Russia's economy have been far worse for Ukraine than Russia. They now need nearly the entire EU aid package which they had so much trouble approving last year- and projected to last for the next two years- this year. Economic activity is utterly paralyzed; no warehouse space, their main exports cannot be exported- agriculture- or have been destroyed recently (metallurgy etc). Indeed, it was particularly dumb to start the campaign when there was an interceptor shortage, and the Russians had increased capabilities like mass produced Geran4/5s

Best indicator of how things are actually going on that front: Zelensky has been begging for an infrastructure/ maritime/ energy truce, for weeks, including today at the UN. The maritime one is particularly ironic, since Ukraine had one until they broke it; and we got a lot of people saying Russia could not enforce a blockade even if it wanted to. Well, that aged like milk.

(In terms of Patriot production, even if it actually approved- and personally, I'd be surprised if it were- it's... The thing about the drones is that they can be manufactured in Birmingham or Munich, shipped in by train and then assembled, in a shed, by a couple of guys with drills. And that's only a slight exaggeration. You occasionally see people driving around with medium range drones literally on their utes (ie pickups), not something you can do with a Patriot type missile.

The equivalent system to Patriot would be the Flamingo or their domestic ballistic missile (Grom) or their domestic anti ship cruise missiles (Neptune). None of whose production is anywhere near the levels required for Patriot production, because they need large production facilities, which are constantly being hit. Indeed, that will likely be worse for Patriot, because they will need a large volume of them and while you can fire off most of those other missiles from anywhere (well, within reason) in Ukraine most Patriots will be going to defend a static target in Kiev, and that makes tracing their source far easier)

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraine-f-16-maintenance-delays-russia-sabena-engineering-85ca626a

https://archive.ph/mv0Ir#selection-929.0-929.257

Of course the US jet is the "best defense", bit remarkable they're laid up that long though.

I'd be 'interested' in where they got the 25k/ kill cost from. Even using Ukrainian stats they've lost one plane outright to a Geran (most likely three, four if you count friendly fire while shooting one down) and even one F-16 is over half way to the 25k cost. Before you've paid anyone, fueled or maintained the plane, loaded its cannon or strapped on any missiles. By my estimate using 3 gives 40k/ kill, solely in plane losses. That's almost certainly more than the cost of a Geran-2, by itself- not the best measure of course, since it doesn't count damage prevented, but still. Way more cost effective vs cruise missiles, but the 650 shot down claim there is... fanciful. That's pretty close to the entire Russian cruise missile production over the time period Ukraine has had F-16s.

Worth noting: one of the reasons Russia has partly switched to launching a few jet drones every few hours rather than mass attacks is that it wears out pilots and airframes far quicker.

Though the more amusing thing given the wsj's propensity for Hegsethian over exaggeration is that while the F-16 is laid up regularly for weeks for maintenance, in the best case, the MiG 29s and Su-24s just keep on trucking. While being maintained in sheds and landing on roads.

Who knew it was that easy

"I agree(d), and that's the important bit" is quintessential Trump, really.

Zelensky has also claimed that Ukraine got no intelligence on yesterday's missile strikes. While that is almost certainly correct it isn't related to the 'truce' and any 'retaliation' from Trump. Ukraine seldom gets intelligence on S-400 launches since the vast majority of them are anti air and there is no way to differentiate those from ballistic mode firings. They'd literally get a dozen warnings per day if they reported all launches and that is not sustainable/ practical. Positive is that S-400 are pretty useless as ground attack, they're mostly fired because they're cheap and soak up interceptors.

How long until we get flying powered armor, I wonder?

On 10/14/2026 at 7:59 AM, Zoraptor said:

Zelensky has also claimed that Ukraine got no intelligence on yesterday's missile strikes.

And he's still claiming this repeatedly, and it's demonstrably false. It's a particularly weird claim because not particularly well connected people on fricking Telegram (eg AMK- who is not well connected compared to the Ukrainian Government, for sure) still get the launch information from their sources in real time. Really don't see the point in lying about that at all; all it will do is get Trump's back up, and justifiably so on that matter at least.

Zelensky may well have a point over Starshield being degraded and Patriots not being delivered. Though you'd have to suspect that the shortage of Patriots is due to the US near completely depleting their own stocks and having to replenish them, with a dollop of Saudi being willing to outbid everyone else for the dregs rather than any antagonism to Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-starlink-elon-musk-trump-dbc49193

Well Musk's not going to be popular in Ukraine.

7 hours ago, Malcador said:

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-starlink-elon-musk-trump-dbc49193

Well Musk's not going to be popular in Ukraine.

Who do you think is more likely telling the truth, Trump or Musk?

Well done for Alberta referendum outcome. I didnt think for a second it would be yes to start the process to leave Canada

Carney also used Trumps attacks to Canada to motivate people to vote to remain, good strategy and another own goal from Trump

"FOREVER CANADIAN " !!!

Alberta's decision to stay in Canada gives Carney backing...

The overwhelming vote by Alberta to stay in Canada gives Mark Carney political capital to focus on remaking the country's economy, writes the BBC's Lyse Doucet.

" Vote like Canada depends on it," Prime Minister Mark Carney declared to cheering crowds in Calgary last week on a stage emblazoned with bright red and white "Forever Canadian" banners.

It's a message that appears to have struck a chord with the electorate, as preliminary results show more than two-thirds of Alberta voters said they want to remain a part of Canada"

On 10/20/2026 at 4:21 PM, Malcador said:

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-starlink-elon-musk-trump-dbc49193

Well Musk's not going to be popular in Ukraine.

Musk wants to get back into the inner loop of Stinky, so it makes some sense from his perspective. I suspect he may also have been pressured by threats to his business. I.e. do you want to follow Anthropic? But the situation could change following the election.

Everything I've seen suggests that the degradation is affecting Starshield, which is the specifically US military run part of Starlink while Starlink itself is working- more or less- fine. As with GPS, it does get jammed etc.

Much as I may dislike him Musk is not going to do that without at very least the approval of the US government, and since it is US military if they tell him to degrade the system for basically anyone then he's obligated to do it.

Musk says he was behind Starlink speed restriction after service in Ukraine is restored

Elon Musk said on Saturday that his company SpaceX had throttled the Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, disrupting operations that the country relies on to defend itself against Russia.

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be,” Musk wrote. “Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.”

Eh, that's clearly a load of bollocks though: did Musk really only work out that Ukraine was using Starlink for drone strikes last week? No, and demonstrably no. That's three years ago now, from Musk himself and for an incident ~4 years ago. He's known about it for at least 4 years. The tos thing is also rubbish.

The 2022/3 incident was Biden Admin, and was what caused Starshield licensing to be split off from Starlink. The evidence for that is pretty incontrovertible, when Starlink got turned off for Russia in 2024 it was specifically the Pentagon doing it. For 'civilian' starlink. That, again, was Biden admin though. Critically, the current situation and the same issue last year were both after stoushes with, well, the notoriously thin skinned manlet that is Donald J Trump.

The high speed (physical velocity) degradation that Ukraine suffered was a specifically military application under Starshield. The static terminals aren't, and weren't effected.

Norway and Finland's leaders have had a phone call with Putin. First time that has (officially) happened for a Euro leader in a year.

Seen a lot of speculation about why, especially since it seems to have blindsided some on the Ukrainian side- though not, by any account I've seen, Ukraine itself. There probably is a big dollop of wanting to avoid the status quo approach of just shouting catch phrases loudly into the wind to project strength for a domestic audience (hello, Kaja and Ursula; though that has certainly been Stubb's MO as well previous) for something more... constructive, in the lead up to a peace conference Europe won't be at and looks set to have negligible influence over. Though one which they can, should they want, ignore the result of of course.

Ironic the European complaints about about Ukraine not being invited, must have forgotten the three conferences they held to set up peace conditions, without Russia. Looked stupid then, and born out being stupid now.

Personally, I rather suspect it has a lot to do with Ukraine burning through cash twice as fast* as expected to, which means they have asked for a 70bn top up to the 90bn that was meant to last them two years. That's going to be next to impossible to get approved given how hard the 90bn was to get through, especially if there's no end in sight, and given that the 90bn was meant to give European taxpayers some certainty. They're going to need options. You'd also have to suspect that they bought into their own rhetoric and thought the economic attacks of the '40 day campaign' would be a big net plus for Ukraine, instead of the big negative they've turned into.

*some imprecise wording gives wriggle room, but it's probably more than twice as fast. The extra 70bn is solely for next year, and the original 90 started disbursement in July, this year. So unless things change they'd need another 35bn for the first six months of 2028 as well, for an extra 105bn in total.