Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that the United States is already testing Ukrainian-made aerial and maritime drones and has given Kyiv "very positive feedback," the clearest sign yet that a long-stalled drone-production deal with Washington worth billions is moving ahead. The confirmation came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara pledged the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot interceptors. Zelenskyy presented the two as separate tracks working towards the same general goals, saying "there are some documents that have already been signed so that the American side can receive from Ukraine various types of systems." Kyiv pitched the multibillion-dollar drone partnership to Washington more than a year ago and has waited for a sign-off that never came, with U.S. officials publicly cool on it as recently as last month. Zelenskyy's account that the testing is underway and going well is the first real movement on the deal in months. The full drone deal, a partnership Zelenskyy has valued at $35 billion to $50 billion, would reportedly set up a 50-50 production venture with the U.S. drawing on up to 200 Ukrainian companies, but remains unsigned awaiting Trump's approval. The shortage that makes a Ukrainian Patriot line so appealing sharpened this spring, when the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran burned through American interceptor stocks, with Gulf defenses firing as many as 1,430 Patriot interceptors in 39 days, draining inventories Ukraine had counted on.
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