In February 2025, President Trump told Ukraine it “didn’t have the cards.” Sixteen months later, at the NATO summit in Turkey, he granted Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missile interceptors on its own soil. What changed?
The short answer, according to Dmytro Kuleba, is that Ukraine learned how to handle Trump — and quietly built the capabilities that made Washington need Kyiv, not the other way around.
Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister and now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, laid out the strategy in a Foreign Policy interview. It is not flattering to Washington. But it is honest.
“The biggest challenge in handling President Trump is not to make him change his position but to sustain his position that favors your interests,” Kuleba said. “Even if he is positive now, how do you sustain this attitude? How do you avoid a rupture or a dramatic U-turn the next day, which Russia will certainly be working on?”
The strategy has three parts: placate, take what is offered, and quietly decouple.
The Patriot License: Too Little, Too Late?
The headline from the NATO summit was Trump’s green light for Ukraine to produce Patriot interceptor missiles domestically. Kuleba welcomed the decision but put it in perspective.
“The first time Ukraine requested the license to produce Patriot missiles in Ukraine was December 2023,” he said. “This is just another story of how long it takes the West to make the most obvious decisions.”
Even now, the production will take months, if not years, to set up. And there is the question of components: “how to sustain the supply of all the components for the production.”
Meanwhile, Russian ballistic missiles keep hitting Ukrainian cities every week.
Kuleba described a visit to his home two weeks ago. “I counted four air defense interceptors being fired,” he said. “A week ago, during the same attack, I heard zero interceptors being fired. The next morning, our air defenses published an official statement that we were not able to intercept any single ballistic missile because we didn’t have Patriot interceptors to do that.”
He added: “We all know now that we are within shooting range for Russia. They have plenty of missiles; we have zero interceptors.”
The diversion of Patriot interceptors to the U.S.-Iran conflict has made the shortage worse. “In 2026 and beyond, the war will be decided in the air, not on the ground,” Kuleba said. The U.S. can now say “we just don’t have them anymore” — not because of a political decision, but because the interceptors are being used elsewhere.
The Quiet Decoupling
Ukraine’s deeper strategy has been to reduce its dependence on Washington while maintaining the relationship.
“That strategy is to placate, make offers, accept what Trump offers to you, if he doesn’t cross your red lines, while quietly continuing the strategy of decoupling,” Kuleba said.
It is working. Ukraine now strikes targets 2,000 kilometers deep inside Russia with its own drones. The U.S. and its allies have started asking Ukraine for advice on cheap offensive drone technology — something unimaginable two years ago.
“Everyone who comes to Ukraine is looking at solutions that work,” Kuleba said. But they miss the point. “They don’t understand that this product will be outdated within a week. You have to find the time and resources to look for the solutions of tomorrow, not only of today.”
Kuleba stressed that Ukraine built a whole defense industry ecosystem from scratch in three years. Drones are just the visible output of that system.
No Turning Point Yet
Asked whether Ukraine is winning, Kuleba pushed back.
“Ukraine has stabilized the pressure Russia puts on it and has found the way to increase the pressure it puts on Russia. But I would really not describe this as a turning point.”
Turning points are only clear in retrospect. And Russia is adapting. “Russia is looking for its own solutions now, and they will find them to counter Ukrainian advances.”
He dismissed the idea that Putin will collapse under pressure. “I don’t think Putin is going to collapse within 40 days. I think Putin is living through his Joseph Stalin moment. Stalin’s moment is when everything is falling apart around you, you do not give in. You tighten the screws. You double down.”
Putin is waiting for winter, Kuleba said, and he will wait for the U.S. election cycle to turn attention elsewhere.
The lesson of the past two years is simple: Ukraine learned that waiting for Washington to act is a losing game. The only way to win is to build what you need yourself — and make sure America needs you more than you need it.