The CIA has worked closely with Ukraine’s intelligence services since Russia’s 2014 invasion, growing a partnership built on assistance and training into a two-way exchange of intelligence, according to Forbes. However, the relationship nearly collapsed in February 2025, when a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended with Washington temporarily cutting off the flow of intelligence and weapons to Kyiv.

But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, said this month that the two countries have moved past previous hurdles and returned to a strong intelligence partnership.

“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” Warner told Politico.

The CIA has spent more than a decade and millions of dollars training and equipping Ukrainian intelligence officers, building around a dozen secret forward-operating bases along the Russian border, ABC News reported in January 2025, citing former U.S. officials.

The senator said the current arrangement has helped Kyiv gain an edge, with long-range drones and missiles now hitting targets far inside Russia.

While American weapons deliveries have taken the spotlight in what Washington gives Ukraine, intelligence is the one U.S. asset Kyiv cannot replace, especially for the long-range strikes now making headlines.

That intelligence reaches directly into the strike campaign, including “the targeting packages for strikes on Russian-troop positions in Ukraine and on energy infrastructure inside Russia,” The Atlantic reported, citing American and Ukrainian sources.

Those sources called intelligence “the one thing the United States still provides free of charge,” crediting CIA Director John Ratcliffe with keeping it that way.

Zelenskyy seems to have risen in Trump’s estimation as Ukraine increasingly fights on its own terms, redefining modern warfare by crafting new tech and strategies, clawing back territory and taking the war deep into Russia — leaving Kyiv looking less dependent and more like an ally with something to trade.

“Trump doesn’t like losers,” one Western intelligence official told the outlet.

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another intelligence committee member, and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico they see a direct connection between the White House’s view of Ukraine’s battlefield successes and Kyiv’s access to intelligence.

“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”

The strengthening relationship between Washington and Kyiv is apparent on multiple fronts.

Trump’s negotiators to end the war, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, plan to head to Ukraine for the first time later this month, a trip that coincides with the country’s independence celebrations, according to Radio Free Europe.

The intel trade is going both ways, with Zelenskyy stating publicly as early as March that Kyiv had proof of Moscow passing intelligence to Iran that he later promised to put in front of Trump.

“We have irrefutable evidence that the Russians continue to provide intelligence to the Iranian regime,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East.”

American officials are backpedaling too. Trump on July 20 told the Financial Times that the U.S. has to be “a little bit careful of who we license to.” Despite that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday posted on X that the two sides have “now reached an agreement.”

The glacial progress may reflect American defense giants’ fear that Kyiv could become a defense industry competitor — rather than posing risk to technology or intellectual property — a Republican official on Capitol Hill told The Atlantic.

“Their real worry is that the Ukrainians will find a way to improve the Patriot and then produce them at scale faster and for much less money than what the existing production lines in the U.S. could do,” the official said, adding that the companies will publicly frame their concerns around “IP theft and tech transfer” instead.

Ukraine’s weapons industry, honed by nearly five years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been booming since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in the spring. The conflict with Iran has drained an estimated two-thirds of America’s pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory, sparking discussion about inventory and strategy.

Some defense partners are eager to work with Ukraine, a country with rare recent experience fighting a large-scale land war, and have shown strong interest in collaborating with Kyiv to develop and field cheaper, faster-to-produce alternatives to million-dollar weapons.

The race toward competition is problematic for the defense giants, the official said — not because Ukraine might steal the Patriot — but because the country’s partners might outbuild it, cutting into the current monopoly on antiballistic capabilities and profits.

Trump first pledged the license at the July NATO summit in Ankara, promising Ukraine permission to produce Patriot missiles for the first time.

“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, adding that the companies had not yet been consulted on the plan.

Zelenskyy said the next day that the question had been “resolved politically,” telling reporters that technical teams needed to start work “without delay, so that we can get licenses very quickly and start production in Ukraine as soon as possible.”

Five days after Trump’s pledge, Ukraine, nine European countries and defense heavyweights including Eurosam, Leonardo, Thales and Saab launched a coalition in Paris to field Freyja, an entirely new antiballistic system built around a Ukrainian interceptor priced at roughly one-fifth of a Patriot round.

A week after that, Lockheed unveiled its own cheaper, faster-to-produce Patriot missile at the Farnborough International Airshow, advertising the PAC-3 ACE at roughly $2 million a round – less than half the price of the round Ukraine fires at Russian ballistic missiles today.

The Patriot line rarely moves that fast. Its current top round, the PAC-3 MSE, was first accepted by the U.S. Army in 2015 and took until 2018 to reach full-rate production, per the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

On July 21, one day after the ACE debut, Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, described production talks with Ukraine as simply “early,” telling reporters the company will “support the US Army and the [Trump] administration on what they want to go do,” according to Breaking Defense.

Raytheon’s process “has just started,” with the company working with the U.S. government “to determine what is feasible and what is best for Ukraine,” its president of land and air defense systems, Tom Laliberty, said at the same show.

Two days later, Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X that he was “grateful for the company’s readiness to take our partnership to an even higher level, where Ukraine would co-produce, together with Raytheon, some of the most vital air defense assets – Patriot interceptors,” after meeting representatives of the group.

But when Zelenskyy asked Trump for “several hundred” interceptors at a July 28 Oval Office meeting, the president refused, citing America’s shrunken stocks, The Atlantic reported.

Three days later, Trump reversed course on the license entirely.

“We have not agreed to that,” he said at a Camp David Cabinet meeting. “We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.”

Then, U.S. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker dampened expectations further on Aug. 3, telling Fox News that “we do not allow anybody but US manufacturers to make those in the United States,” adding that a long-term production agreement “will not be concluded before this winter,” per Euronews.

The deal’s current status is unclear.

“The decision has been made,” Zelenskyy said during an interview on Ukrainian television over the weekend, according to United24. “It was made by the President of the United States and other important American government institutions.”

American officials have yet to respond to Zelenskyy’s latest comments.

After decades of relying on the U.S.-made Patriot interceptor system and its hit-to-kill PAC-3 munition as the most proven air defense against ballistic missiles, three new tracks are now leveraging international cooperation and a dire global need to develop and manufacture cheaper interceptor platforms.

Some officials, meanwhile, are hoping the sense of urgency leads to the fielding of the first new prototypes by the end of 2026 — years faster than today’s Patriots can be made.

It’s an ambitious ask.

The missile defense world has long described the mechanics behind anti-ballistic defense as akin to hitting a bullet out of the sky with another bullet, multiplied in difficulty by the number of simultaneous air threats coming in — a stark reminder of the mass air raids seen today in Iran and Ukraine that stretch air defenses to the breaking point.

Today’s anti-ballistic momentum began with U.S. President Donald Trump’s seemingly off-the-cuff comment at the NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month, when he pledged to grant Ukraine permission to produce Patriot missiles for the first time.

“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, adding that the companies that make the system’s components, primarily Lockheed Martin, had not yet been consulted on the plan.

Five days later, Ukraine and nine European countries launched a coalition in Paris to field Freyja, an entirely new anti-ballistic system centered on a Ukrainian interceptor priced at roughly one-fifth of a Patriot round.

A week after that, Lockheed Martin unveiled a cheaper, faster-to-produce Patriot missile of its own. And on Wednesday, the company announced the Pentagon had awarded it another $53.86 billion for PAC-3 production, bringing its multiyear deal up to $58.62 billion and aiming to triple production capacity by the end of 2030.

The new anti-ballistics arms race has manifested largely as a result of the munitions shortage created by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, during which American forces have fired at least 1,060 to 1,430 Patriots at roughly $3.9 million apiece, draining an estimated two-thirds of America’s pre-war Patriot inventory, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The diminished stockpile is compounded by the ongoing war in Ukraine, where ballistic missiles are the only threat Kyiv still needs help taking down and the one munition it has completely run out of.

With three new anti-ballistic tracks opened in July alone, NATO and its allies are aiming to shore up air defenses as quickly as possible.

Here is where the primary Patriot interceptor stands, and how the three new alternative pathways in the arms race stack up.

The standard: The Patriot interceptor

The Patriot, the U.S.-made gold standard of ground-based air defense, pairs a radar, a command post and launchers with two families of interceptor missiles, each fielded in several variants.

Lockheed Martin builds the PAC-3 MSE, the hit-to-kill round that rams ballistic missiles out of the sky, while Raytheon, which also makes the Patriot’s radars and ground systems, builds the older PAC-2 GEM-T, a round that explodes near its target and works best against aircraft and cruise missiles.

The MSE is the only Western munition that has reliably killed Russian ballistic missiles — from Iskanders to modified S-300s — in Ukrainian service. It has even downed the air-launched Kinzhal, which flies at hypersonic speeds.

That record is why the Pentagon on Wednesday awarded Lockheed a multiyear deal now worth up to $58.62 billion to triple production capacity by the end of 2030. Today, each round costs roughly $3.9 million.

“This is a once-in-a-generation moment, and we are moving with wartime urgency to deliver the Arsenal of Freedom,” Lockheed chairman and CEO Jim Taiclet said in a statement.

The grant: Ukrainian PAC-3s under US license

Trump’s pledge in Turkey would make Ukraine only the second country outside the U.S. licensed to build Patriot missiles, after Japan, which has produced them under license for decades.

Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are only now standing up a joint production line. Berlin is negotiating a license of its own and Germany’s existing GEM-T work runs through a joint venture with Raytheon rather than a national license, according to The Associated Press.

The license under discussion for Kyiv would likely cover the missiles — rather than complete batteries — and could mean final assembly from imported component kits instead of production from scratch, the AP reported.

Poland has offered to host the joint production on its territory for safety and security reasons, according to Polish news agency PAP.

“It is about securing this production, so that this production takes place in a safe location,” Polish Deputy Defense Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said in Washington on July 23.

Zelenskyy said he met with Lockheed Martin representatives while visiting the U.S. for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral on July 28, posting on Telegram that “Our teams are already working on specific solutions to move to joint production as soon as possible.”

The cost of the licensed PAC-3, meanwhile, would stay the same at close $4 million per round.

Yehor Chernev, deputy chairman of the Rada’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, estimates Ukraine needs at least 18 to 24 months to launch a first pilot production line, “followed by more time to complete the first weapons,” per The Associated Press.

Zelenskyy is pushing for even faster joint production.

“We expect that by the end of 2026, our Ukrainian team will have the technical capability to produce U.S. missiles,” he said on July 15.

The analogue: Freyja

Freyja is a full Patriot-style anti-ballistic system that includes an interceptor, launcher, radar and command-and-control network.

The system, designed by Kyiv startup Fire Point, is built around its FP-7.X interceptor missile and various capabilities supplied by European partners.

Zelenskyy called Freyja “an analogue of Patriot, but a system for more mass production and a cheaper system.”

His comments came as he formally launched the Integrated Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition in Paris on July 13 alongside nine other countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The FP-7.X flew for the first time in early June and is built to kill ballistic targets at roughly 15 miles up using a high-explosive fragmentation warhead rather than the PAC-3’s hit-to-kill collision — which may come in later versions — at a target price of approximately $700,000 per interceptor, or roughly one-fifth the price of a PAC-3.

The company says it will build three interceptors a day starting in August. Zelenskyy wants the system up and running within 12 months, and the coalition is targeting its first real ballistic intercept for the end of 2027.

“We have an ambitious goal: to have an MVP ready by the first half of next year,” Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Reuters on July 27. “That is a prototype that can already demonstrate its first practical results.”

The Lockheed cost-cutter: PAC-3 ACE

Lockheed unveiled the PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or ACE, at the Farnborough International Airshow on July 20.

Built on the PAC-3’s fire-control system and fully linked to the Patriot and the Integrated Battle Command System that allied air defenders already run, it is designed to counter airbreathing threats — meaning weapons that rely on oxygen for propulsion — along with cruise missiles and close- and short-range ballistic missiles, a tier below the high-end targets the MSE was built to counter.

“American and allied warfighters need a solution that is battle-tested and budget-smart, and PAC-3 ACE delivers exactly that by building on the unrivaled performance of the PAC-3 MSE,” Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in the announcement.

Lockheed says it will develop and produce the round jointly with American and European industry partners.

International manufacturing is also under consideration, with the munition’s first flight expected in early 2028.

The company advertises ACE at less than half the price of an MSE, or roughly $2 million a round, without disclosing an exact figure.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to the kill at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing while being asked about a three-year halt in U.S. air-defense funding.

“I want to highlight the incredible work the Ukraine industrial base is doing as they scale their own capabilities,” Caine said.

“Recently we had the first air-to-air kill where a Ukrainian F-16 shot down a Russian fighter, so I think their ability to scale their layered defense has come a long way over the last couple of years.”

Although Caine did not specify which type of Russian aircraft was taken out, Ukraine’s Air Force announced earlier this month that it had shot down a Russian Su-35 on the eastern front.

Until now, Ukraine has primarily used its F‑16s to defensively knock down incoming drones and cruise missiles — not offensively hunting enemy aircraft. The air-to-air kill is the latest example of Kyiv’s rapidly expanded air defense network forged after persevering through years of full-scale war, Caine said.

Russia’s defense ministry has not acknowledged the loss. Pro-Russian military bloggers on Telegram confirmed a Su-35 went down and said the pilot survived and ejected safely, while other Russian channels claimed a Patriot battery delivered the fatal shot.

Ukraine’s F-16s have shot down 2,200 of roughly 3,000 Russian drones and missiles it has intercepted, air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Dutch broadcaster NOS earlier this month.

The kills are in spite of the technical advantages favoring Russia’s Su-35 over Ukraine’s F-16s.

Most of it’s F‑16s were given to Kyiv by the Netherlands and Denmark, who sent rebuilt 1970s‑ and 1980s‑era F‑16A and B airframes — closer to the F‑16s that the U.S. Air Force flew in the early 2000s than to today’s newer models, according to a Sandboxx analysis.

The Su‑35S is one of the most modern fighters Moscow flies and usually comes out as the winner in a long‑range fight, experts say.

Its Irbis‑E radar can detect a fighter‑sized target at up to 250 miles (400 km) in a narrow search mode, according to its Russian manufacturer, far beyond the range of the 1990s‑era AN/APG‑66(V)2 radar on Ukraine’s F‑16s.

The Su‑35 also has the advantage of carrying the longer‑reaching R‑77M missile, which Moscow credits with a range of roughly 120 miles (190 km), against the 75 to 100 miles of the AIM‑120C‑8 AMRAAMs Ukraine is known to field, according to The War Zone.

Allies have taken notice of Kyiv’s recent battlefield successes, signing billions in arms contracts with Kyiv since the war with Iran drove up demand for the latest defense tech from Europe and the Middle East.

Ukraine’s homegrown interceptor‑drone industry has scaled rapidly in the past year, with some producers now capable of turning out over 100,000 drones per month, officials say.

Washington is also inching toward a multibillion dollar weapons‑production deal with Kyiv.

The Ukrainian armed forces are “the strongest, most powerful armed forces in all of Europe,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May, months before the CIA director confirmed last week that Russian recruits last just 20 to 30 minutes after arriving on the battlefield thanks to Ukraine’s fierce drone fighting tactics.

Drapatyi, 43, is widely seen as a reform-minded, soldier-first commander whose habit of owning failures in public made him the counterweight to Syrskyi’s centralized, old world style.

Protesters have chanted his name nightly along with the names of a handful of other popular commanders for the past week as anger over Fedorov’s removal has grown.

“It has been decided that Mykhailo Drapatyi will become the new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media Tuesday, shortly before midnight.

“It is a fact that Oleksandr Syrskyi ensured Ukraine’s success in defending Kyiv, in the Kharkiv offensive operation, and in the Kursk operation,” he wrote. “I am grateful to Oleksandr Syrskyi and every one of our soldiers for their strong positions on the front lines. I am grateful to Mykhailo Drapatyi for his vision.”

“I thank the President of Ukraine for the trust, the Minister of Defense for the support, and the Defense Forces for a new stage of service,” the new CIC wrote on Facebook in response. “I will work responsibly, focused and with respect for the people who are defending our state today.”

Last week, Drapatyi shared support for Fedorov and reform in the military administration. “The military needs change, but without justice, no change will make sense to the people who carry this war on their shoulders every day,” he wrote.

“A commander has no right to remain silent about problems, especially when their cost is measured in lost opportunities, time, and human lives,” he added.

Fedorov welcomed the replacement, calling it “a new era and a new hope in the fight of free people for freedom and justice” on social media just minutes after Zelensky shared the long-awaited update.

In naming a commander widely seen as a reformer, Zelenskyy has answered a war-weary nation and may have defused the gravest domestic crisis of his wartime presidency, even as the fate of Fedorov, the ousted minister the protests began over, remains unsettled.

“Removing Fedorov = helping the Russians”

It began as a cabinet reshuffle.

When Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko stepped down at Zelenskyy’s request early last week, the move dissolved the government and forced the reappointment of every minister.

By Wednesday, it was clear Fedorov would not get his job back.

The backlash was immediate.

Col. Pavlo Yelizarov, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s air force who helped oversee the country’s defense against Russia’s nightly missile and drone barrages, resigned in protest on Thursday, writing in a Facebook post that Fedorov’s removal was “a great evil for the country’s defense capability.”

The same day, Serhii Sternenko, the drone-crowdfunding activist Fedorov had made his adviser on drone warfare, quit too.

“A lot of things did not work out, including due to bureaucratic obstacles and artificial delays on the part of those who are hindered by army reform,” he wrote on X.

Protests against the shake up erupted across the country that afternoon, spreading to more than a dozen cities and drawing thousands of people wielding signs with slogans such as “Removing Fedorov = helping the Russians” and “Don’t change what works, change for the better.”

Overnight, the protests became one of the largest public demonstrations since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost five years ago, second only to the anticorruption gatherings that swept the nation last summer.

While Thursday’s demonstrations began as a call to reinstate Fedorov, they broadened rapidly to include a parallel demand for the removal of Syrskyi — once the commander’s role in the former defense minister’s ousting became known.

Zelenskyy ultimately said the firing was catalyzed by a feud he could no longer manage.

“There is a difficult dialogue between the military leadership and the Defence Ministry,” he told journalists on Thursday. “It is difficult on different levels, by the way. It is not just about individuals.”

The political clash between Syrskyi and Fedorov comes to a head

The rift pitted the military’s old school against its modernizers: a Soviet-trained general running the war through a rigid chain of command, and a tech minister who built his career on digitizing the state.

Syrskyi, commander-in-chief since February 2024, organized the defense of Kyiv in the war’s opening weeks, the rapid 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive and the 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

But reformers faulted him for a top-down command culture inherited from the Soviet era, and some troops call him “the Butcher” over the cost of holding the city of Bakhmut.

Syrskyi responded to the political turmoil and growing accusations against his fitness for office in an op-ed in Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi on Monday.

He rejected the charge that he resisted embracing drone warfare and noted that he formulated Ukraine’s dedicated Unmanned Systems Forces as a separate military branch to formalize the tech’s importance in the war today.

He also apologized to Fedorov, saying he was “surprised to learn” the two had a conflict and that he had “perceived our relationship as a working one: with complex issues, with different positions.”

“If I offended anyone: Mykhailo Albertovich, I’m sorry. I can be harsh,” he said. “But I ask you, and everyone who is following this story with enthusiasm: let’s focus not on the personal, but on the global. On victory.”

As defense minister since only January, Fedorov oversaw Ukraine’s expansion of drone and deep-strike operations, and a war-weary public embraced the technology as its best edge against a much larger enemy.

In an independent public opinion poll conducted by international firm Gradus Research on July 16–17, found that over 60% of Ukrainians opposed Fedorov’s removal, and nearly half said they believed his ousting would weaken the country’s defense.

Fedorov is known for moving fast and iterating often.

When the reshuffle cost him his job, Fedorov preempted the president’s office by announcing his own exit and then laying out the fight behind it in a rare public airing of the government’s infighting under martial law.

Then, at a press conference the day after his firing, he said his reforms had run into “a complete blocking” by the military leadership, and that Zelenskyy had forced a choice between him and the commander.

“Instead of thinking about how to defeat Russia asymmetrically, [Syrskyi] figured out how to split the country,” Fedorov said at the event, hours before the first protesters entered city squares.

“The Flying BMP”

Drapatyi has built the opposite reputation to his predecessor, becoming generally well-liked among soldiers and civilian personnel alike for his dedication to his troops and his willingness to learn and adapt while leading under the most difficult of circumstances.

Others knew him as “The Flying BMP.”

A video of the major general plowing a blue-and-yellow-flagged BMP through a Russian roadblock during Moscow’s temporary occupation of Mariupol in 2014 went viral shortly after the city’s liberation for its brazen success. The video quickly becoming a meme for determination at all costs — and tacit understanding for Drapatyi’s own stubborn fortitude.

A career tank officer with more than two decades in uniform, he was promoted to command the Ground Forces in November 2024.

In that role, he oversaw the newly formed 155th Mechanized Brigade, also known as the “Anne of Kyiv Brigade,” that became the first Ukrainian brigade trained and equipped completely by a Western ally — and that became infamous for being hit by mass desertions before it was even fully deployed.

Drapatyi admitted that the failures of the 155th came from Ukraine’s own recruitment and training, not the French exchange program, and pushed for reforms across the military establishment as a result.

His tenure hit its biggest and final challenge later that year, when a Russian Iskander missile struck a training ground in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, killing 12 soldiers and wounding more than 60.

Russia had been hitting rear training grounds all year, killing troops far from the front and forcing negligence investigations into why they were still massed in the open, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Although the Ground Forces command reported that most personnel had reached shelters and that no troops were massed in formation, the official account failed to adequately explain how — if the troops were securely in their bunkers — so many could be killed.

Drapatyi took responsibility for the deaths, saying his orders to disperse and take shelter were not carried out, making him an ineffective leader. He resigned as Ground Forces commander.

“An army where no one is responsible for the losses is dying from within,” he said at the time.

Zelenskyy rejected the resignation and refused to let him leave the military, instead moving him out of the Ground Forces within days into the reconfigured Joint Forces Command, a step framed as allowing him to focus on frontline operations.

There, units like the well-known Khartiia Brigade retook ground around Kupiansk, according to Euromaidan Press.

Just six months later, his standing had grown to the point that protesters across the country were chanting his name in the week before his appointment, often right alongside Fedorov’s.

Fedorov’s fate still unknown

Fedorov welcomed Drapatyi’s appointment as “a voice of change that could not be ignored,” adding that he had also called Syrskyi to thank him for defending Ukraine.

Where Syrskyi goes next is uncertain.

“My job is war. Strategy, front, people,” he wrote in Monday’s column. “This is what I do and will continue to do.”

Fedorov’s fate also remains unknown.

He has said he will return only as defense minister, and he turned down another post, one focused on military technology and modernizing the ministry, according to the anonymous sources speaking to Kyiv Independent.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he would formalize Drapatyi’s appointment Wednesday, and that more decisions were still to come.

Fedorov, for his part, is waiting.

“We need to move even faster and write new chapters, correcting all previous mistakes,” Fedorov said after Drapatyi’s appointment.

The assessment comes as Ukraine’s battlefield technology has stalled Russia’s advance along the front and drawn foreign partners ready to spend billions of dollars in deals with its defense industry.

European and Ukrainian officials have said for months that Russian casualty rates have climbed to record levels, with Ukraine’s top general telling NATO allies in May that Russia loses at least 1,000 soldiers a day.

“Our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine,” Ratcliffe said at the Defense and Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania. “The average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes.”

“That’s because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines,” he added.

Ratcliffe’s confirmation shows how decisively emerging technology can shape a war — and why the U.S. cannot afford to fall behind.

The Russia-to-Ukraine casualty ratio reached nearly 8-to-1 in the first half of 2026, up from roughly 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 for most of the war, as AI-powered drones expanded across the front, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

More than 2 million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, with Russia bearing 1.4 million of those casualties, the CSIS researchers found, including as many as 450,000 dead — the highest battlefield death toll suffered by any major power since World War II.

“The takeaway is that the mastery of these emerging technologies is every bit as important as military strength,” Ratcliffe said during the summit. “That’s why an inferior force, four and a half years later, has held off the superior force of Russia.”

Ratcliffe said the U.S. needs to take the lessons learned on the battlefield in Ukraine seriously.

“The pace of their advance has stopped as Ukraine’s mastery of emerging technologies and, in this case, drone warfare, asymmetric warfare, is such a great equalizer, and shows why we have to be leading on this in all respects for us to maintain our place in the global marketplace,” he said.

His remarks came as Washington and its European allies race to fund Ukraine’s drone programs and lock in access to the technology behind them.

The day before, the European Union and Ukraine signed a drone-production deal in Kyiv worth over $6 billion, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that progress had been made on a package of multibillion dollar deals with the U.S.

The move, which has been the subject of speculation, was confirmed when Fedorov published a farewell social media post on Wednesday.

It followed Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko’s resignation at the request of the president on Tuesday, which triggered the removal of and subsequent need to reappoint all the ministers currently serving in her cabinet.

“It has been a great honor to serve the Ukrainian people as Minister of Defense,” Fedorov wrote in the post. “Thank you to everyone who defends Ukraine and works for victory.”

Fedorov’s departure surprised many Ukrainians, who credited him with helping Ukraine secure recent victories.

Under his tenure, Fedorov secured dozens of drone deals with international partners and instituted military structure and budget reforms.

Supporters of Federov, including adviser Serhii Sternenko, argued the change could slow ongoing military efforts.

In his farewell message, Fedorov listed 22 accomplishments he said his team completed during his tenure, including restricting Russian access to Starlink, instituting draft and military pay reform, and launching the country’s antiballistics initiatives.

The outgoing minister also listed three goals he said remained unfinished, including transforming the ministry’s structure to NATO standards and “common sense,” completing the transition of procurements to tenders, and building a “culture of accountability for decisions.”

Sternenko, also said in a post on Wednesday that he was leaving his position at the Ministry of Defense.

“From now on, I am no longer an advisor to the Minister of Defense,” he wrote, “which undoubtedly reduces the opportunities to qualitatively help change the situation in the military with drones.”

Zelenskyy has not publicly explained the decision or named a successor.

The Economist reported that Fedorov, a 35-year-old with a tech background, was rumored to be in conflict with multiple factions within Ukraine’s military administration.

Others saw his initiatives as too progressive, according to Kyiv-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko in comments to Kyiv Independent.

“There is alleged friction in Fedorov’s relationship with [Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr] Syrskyi,” Fesenko said. “Not everyone is happy with Fedorov’s proposals for reforming the military, particularly his plans to overhaul the way the Defense Ministry operates.”

Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Ihor Klymenko, has reportedly been offered the job to replace Fedorov, according to the Kyiv Independent, which cited anonymous sources.

Despite leaving the ministry, Fedorov vowed to keep serving the country in other ways.

He first said a coalition of allies would work together to build the complicated weapon at last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, where U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to let Ukraine build its own Patriot interceptors after recognizing that, in Zelenskyy’s words, Ukraine is “a country that is ready to do this.”

The initiative was launched as a result of a global shortage of anti-ballistic interceptors, as the war in Iran and nearby countries carries on into its fifth month and allied partners across the world push to stock up on defensive weapons.

Nine European countries joined Ukraine as founding members in Paris: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

“We believe that the protection of Europe requires a global solution of integrated missile defence architecture to deter and defeat future missile threats — developed through collective effort, technological openness, and trusted industrial cooperation,” officials wrote in the joint statement formalizing the new coalition.

Although the United States has increased Patriot output and Europe has expanded production of the surface-to-air missile systems SAMP/T, IRIS-T and NASAMS, the shortfall between demand and supply is still wide.

“By bringing together our defence industrial base, our research, and our operational experience, we aim to build a shared antiballistic missile capacity for Europe and support relevant contributory activities. We do this not against any people, but in defence of our own,” the signatories said.

For Ukraine, gaining antiballistic capabilities would enable better protection of its cities and frontlines, both which have increasingly been targeted by Russian ballistic missiles that cannot be taken out by air defenses — and free them from completely depending on allies for this type of support.

For Europe, the coalition offers a fast-tracked path to resolving weapons shortages, strengthening their own defenses at a discount and benefiting from the battlefield expertise Ukraine has gained over years of full-scale war.

The group’s current priorities are to “establish common operational requirements, joint technical working groups, clear governance mechanisms, and a roadmap towards the Coalition’s first operational capabilities,” the announcement said.

In statements about the new coalition posted on social media on Monday, the president explained why Kyiv and Europe need their own anti-ballistic system.

“The threat of ballistic missiles in the world is only going to increase. This is one of the main consequences of the wars in Russia and Iran,” Zelenskyy said. “Therefore, FREYJA must become a reality.”

Ukraine will head the project, supplying the interceptor itself, with partners providing the radar, tracking and command-and-control systems it lacks, Zelenskyy said last week.

“Europe needs more protection against ballistic threats. Together, we can create such a system,” he said. “It is important to politically confirm that FREYJA is our joint project, serving the interests of all of Europe.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa also attended Monday’s meeting in Paris, in addition to representatives from several European defense companies, including: Destinus, Diehl Defence, Eurosam, Fire Point, HENSOLDT, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Leonardo, MBDA, Saab, Safran, Thales and Weibel Scientific.

“Everyone present here is a vital part of what we need to create this system,” the Ukrainian president said. “I am grateful to the companies for their willingness to work together.”

Although the partnership’s nuts and bolts are still in the works, each country in the coalition will retain a certain degree of autonomy, Zelenskyy said.

“Europeans themselves will be able to decide how many systems Europe needs and where they should be located. This would create a strategically new situation,” he said. “Each European system would add to the overall strength and provide different parts of Europe with a strategic foundation for defense.”

Like Patriot interceptors, Freyja is an entire system that will rely on allies for production support, centering on Fire Point’s FP-7.X interceptor, designed to hit a ballistic target at roughly 15 miles altitude.

But while Patriots take 24 months to build, Zelenskyy said he wants Freyja flying much sooner.

“Each of us holds a crucial piece of the puzzle: we in Ukraine have the missiles, but these are only parts of the system,” he said. “Together, we can create this comprehensive system – FREYJA – within the next twelve months.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, detailing the deal on Thursday after he and Trump met at the NATO summit in Turkey earlier in the week, said the two have resolved it “as leaders” and that Ukraine has been “recognized by America as a country that is ready” to build the system.

“Thank you for the positive decision regarding the license for the production of Patriots,” Zelenskyy said, noting that Trump “repeatedly emphasized that today only two or three countries in the world can produce Patriots, because others are not technologically ready.”

Zelenskyy has pressed Washington for the interceptors for years, as Russia has fired ever more ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities. Trump’s offer to let Kyiv produce Patriots could hand it an edge both on the battlefield and in its standing with allies and foes alike, but only on a timeline that will take years and cost billions of dollars.

“Our groups, our diplomats, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense need to agree on all the other technical matters,” Zelenskyy told journalists on Thursday. “The sooner we agree, the sooner we will be able to produce Patriots.”

The promise moves Ukraine from a war it entered reliant on Western arms toward building the most sought after air defense weapon of the conflict itself, a milestone for Kyiv and a measure of how far Washington has shifted. It also moves Kyiv a step closer to defending itself without leaning on allies who have rationed what they send.

So far, the nuts and bolts of the deal remain largely undecided from both government officials and industry leaders — and unsigned. The manufacturer has also not been entirely brief.

“We haven’t informed the company of that yet,” Trump said of Lockheed Martin, which builds the interceptor, while announcing the agreement.

The Patriot’s PAC-3 interceptor destroys its target on impact, a “hit-to-kill” design, and is one of the only weapons able to stop a ballistic missile, making it among the most closely guarded technology the United States exports.

A Patriot interceptor brings together an entire ecosystem of weapons: a radar, a command post, along with the launchers and the interceptors themselves. Ukraine is aiming for permission to manufacture the PAC-3 MSE, the newest and the hardest to build.

Japan is the only other country that builds Patriots under a U.S. license today. Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are jointly standing up a European production line, and Berlin is separately negotiating its own license.

Washington licenses it sparingly because of fears the tech could end up in enemy hands. That caution has only deepened now.

The U.S. fired between 1,060 and 1,430 Patriots in this year’s war with Iran at roughly $3.9 million apiece, many more than the hundreds Ukraine received from all of its Western allies over a span of four years.

Each interceptor takes 24 months to build and 30 for its solid rocket motor, and a single Boeing plant in Huntsville, Alabama, makes the seeker for each one, a Foreign Policy Research Institute analysis found.

That single plant turned out between 650 and 700 seekers last year, a bottleneck that paces the whole line.

Although the Pentagon signed a separate deal in April to triple the key part’s production, even the interceptors ordered under an accelerated $4.8 billion contract this year are not expected for delivery until 2030.

“Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.

Lockheed Martin delivered 620 of its top PAC-3s last year. A January framework with the Pentagon aims to lift that to 2,000 a year by 2030, according to a Foreign Policy Research Institute analysis.

And Ukraine has no anti-ballistic system of its own — yet.

Zelenskyy this week announced Ukraine is pouring resources into a homegrown version, a cheaper, mass-produced answer to the Patriot he calls FREYA, built around a Ukrainian-made missile and European radars, launchers and command systems.

He plans to present it to partners in France in the coming days, he said Thursday.

Russia’s ballistic missiles are its deadliest weapon against Ukrainian cities. A mass attack overnight on Sunday killed at least 22 people in Kyiv, with all of Russia’s 29 ballistic missiles dodging air defenses, Ukraine’s air force said.

More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s 2022 invasion, the U.N. human rights office has verified.

Zelenskyy has called those strikes Russia’s “only advantage” left and named Patriot production his “priority number one.”

Ukraine is “working in different directions” at once, he said, pursuing the American license, European financing and French systems side by side.

The French-Italian SAMP/T, a costly system Zelenskyy called an “analogue of Patriot,” is already arriving under agreements he struck with French President Emmanuel Macron. It is the only other weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal built specifically to stop a ballistic missile.

“Production is very small, queues are very long, involving different countries,” Zelenskyy said of the Patriot and the French systems.

The president acknowledged that none of these solutions will end Russia’s onslaught of Ukrainian cities overnight, making the development of domestic defense systems Kyiv’s top priority.

“Then we will close Ukraine’s sky with our own capabilities,” he said.

The push follows this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, where allies pledged €70 billion ($80 billion) in military aid for Ukraine this year.

U.S. President Donald Trump also pledged to allow Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot interceptors, a long-awaited goal of Kyiv. “We’ll give them the right to make Patriots,” he said.

“This is a European model,” Zelenskyy said Thursday. “FREYA is our Ukrainian anti-ballistic system…an analogue in terms of intercepting ballistic targets, an analogue of Patriot, but a system for more mass production and a cheaper system.”

Long-range missile and drone strikes caused 45% of Ukraine’s civilian casualties in May, the worst monthly toll since April 2022, according to a U.N. report.

Ballistic missiles remain the one threat Ukraine still can’t intercept with a system it built itself. Freya could change that, potentially shifting Kyiv’s position on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

Freya centers on the FP-7.X interceptor, produced by the Ukrainian company Fire Point, and is designed to hit a ballistic target at roughly 15 miles altitude.

Like Patriot interceptors, Freya is an entire system and will rely on allies for production support.

“A system needs not only a missile and a launcher. It needs radars, command and control, and many different elements,” he said.

“To create our anti-ballistic system very quickly, we need European partners who have production of those things that Ukraine does not yet have for its own anti-ballistic system.”

Fire Point has signed a memorandum with Germany’s Hensoldt for radar technology and is in talks with France’s Thales, Italy’s Leonardo and Norway’s Kongsberg to supply tracking and command-and-control systems.

Zelenskyy said the Freya coalition, which he described as comprising roughly eight partner nations, will speed up the production process and make a faster timeline possible.

“We can do it ourselves, but years will pass,” he said.

Fire Point is targeting a per-shot cost near $700,000, versus roughly $3.8 million for a Patriot PAC-3.

The missile was flight-tested in early June, the company said, and is aiming to mass-produce three a day starting in August and intercept its first ballistic missile by the end of 2027.

The upcoming meeting in France may yield the next updates as Zelenskyy said the current plan depends on partner nations, their manufacturers and their production capacity signing on.

“God willing, the partners will support it, and God willing, our manufacturers will succeed with all of this,” he said.