Trump Says Ukraine War Ended US Weapons, But As Iran Takes That Mantle, Kyiv Sees Opportunity

Kyiv – The White House wants Congress to provide at least $200 billion in funding for Iran’s war, and President Trump says that is due to Ukraine’s help in eliminating a large number of American weapons as it defends against a full-scale Russian attack.

“This is a changing world,” said Mr. Trump on Thursday. “We want to have a lot of ammunition, which we have right now – we have a lot of ammunition, but they are reduced by giving too much to Ukraine.”

Throughout his second term, Mr. Trump criticized the Biden administration for, in his view, providing Ukraine with weapons that the American defense industry cannot quickly replenish.

Last summer, after the revision of the stocks, the US stop the shipment of some weapons to Ukraine. Those arms transfers were eventually reinstated under a new measure that sees NATO allies footing the bulk of the bill, but the episode made it clear that the White House views defense support for Ukraine as an obstacle to ensuring that America’s defense capabilities remain in line with the needs of any future conflict.

However, now Ukraine is giving reasons to re-examine that idea. As the war with Iran depletes the US stockpile of interceptor missiles, Ukrainian officials are offering deals to help replenish them. On Saturday, Ukrainian officials met with representatives of the Trump administration to discuss, among other topics, an agreement for the two countries to jointly produce drones and drone interceptors.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the deal could be between $35-50 billion. He also said that there are several other possible agreements in the works with America’s Persian Gulf partners, urgent need for Ukrainian drone interceptors it has become a public issue amid Iran’s relentless attacks.

But experts say the deals currently in the works go beyond immediate air defense needs in the Middle East, and could lay the foundation for a long-term US-Ukraine defense industry relationship.

Iran’s war is consuming Patriot interceptor missiles much faster than Ukraine’s

Shortly after the US began supplying Ukraine with weapons in 2022, concerns arose about the ability of the American defense industry to replace them. More alarming is the possible shortage of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, which are among the most effective weapons for shooting down incoming ballistic missiles.

“We realized that we now have a defense industrial base that is not overpowered to meet wartime needs,” Matt Tavares, a defense analyst who has served as a Pentagon adviser to several administrations, told CBS News. “Some of the things we gave the people of Ukraine could not be taken back by the defense industry.”

When President Trump returned to power in 2025, his administration promised to quickly start the production of air defense weapons and be smarter about giving them to allies. Starting last summer, some military shipments were redirected, including 20,000 anti-drone missiles originally intended for Ukraine that were sent to US Air Force units in the Middle East.

In January, the Pentagon announced an agreement with Lockheed Martin to produce three Patriot interceptors.

But the Iran war has complicated the Defense Department’s efforts to conserve weapons.

America’s allies in the Middle East fired 800 Patriot interceptors as they fended off Iranian retaliatory attacks in the first week of the war alone, according to Zelenskyy, who noted that his country had only used 600 Patriots during the four years of war with Russia.

Experts say the immediate use of these expensive weapons may be driving, at least in part, the White House’s request for an additional $200 billion from Congress — nearly four times the $70 billion in military aid given to Ukraine through 2022.

“The extent to which America’s stockpile is depleted, it has more to do with what’s been happening in the Middle East for the past nine months than what’s happened in Ukraine,” Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News.

Can Ukraine offer long-term solutions to the US military buildup?

As the war in Iran drains interceptor stocks, the US and its Gulf allies have turned to Ukraine for its drone defense technology. President Zelenskyy said last week Ukraine had sent more than 200 drone experts to the Middle East to help protect military installations and civilian facilities from Iranian attacks.

In return, the Ukrainians hope to acquire some of the Western interceptor missiles that have been so important to their air defense. Asked by reporters in Kyiv last week if missile shipments from the US and Europe to Ukraine could be disrupted again because of the Iran war, Zelenskyy said, “the risk is very high,” and stressed that getting more Patriot missiles “is our priority.”

But the agreements now in the works between Kyiv and Washington, as well as Kyiv and the Gulf states, are unlikely to result in a direct arms exchange to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses or the Middle East in the short term.

“The problem is how can we quickly produce Patriot interceptors. I would imagine that the Gulf, at the moment, wants to hold on to all their interceptor stocks because they don’t know when they will be returned,” Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CBS News.

He said it would be, in Ukraine, more about long-term benefits.

“There is a way here that they can work with drones, get that investment money, and then that money that goes into the defense sector can be used to develop things like long-range strike or air defense information,” Masscot said.

That kind of plan could prove equally politically beneficial for Kyiv, even if it doesn’t help its existing military needs.

“This could be a time when the Ukrainians who help here show good will on the part of the United States, and show that they are contributing, not just eliminating security services,” Karako said.