Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv has reached an agreement with the United States to receive monthly deliveries of Patriot interceptor missiles, just as Kyiv runs out of air defence ammo leaving its skies open to an incessant Russian bombardment.

Speaking alongside Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić during a visit to Belgrade on August 7, Zelenskiy said Washington had agreed to allocate an undefined number of Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine every month.

"Will they allocate missiles to us every month? Yes, we have an agreement," the Ukrainian president told journalists at a joint press conference.

The announcement comes after months of repeated Ukrainian appeals for additional Patriot interceptors, which remain the only Western-supplied system in Ukraine's arsenal capable of reliably intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. The lack of missiles has been turning into a crisis and as IntelliNews reported Zelenskiy has been sounding increasingly desperate in recent weeks as he tries to source more air defence ammo from somewhere.

The deal comes as relations between Washington and Kyiv has improved dramatically following a meeting between Zelenskiy and US President Donald Trump at the Ankara Nato summit on July 8. Trump pledged to grant Ukraine a license to make Patriot missiles in Ukraine, but walked that promise a few days later. Zelenskiy also asked Trump for a tranche of 300 missiles from the US stockpile, but he declined as it has been reported that the US is down to its last 759 missiles and is anticipating renewed fighting in the Iran conflict.

However, Ukraine is being brutally punished in an escalating tit-for-tat missile war and has only a handful of the PAK-3 interceptor missiles left.

Zelenskiy didn’t specify how many missiles Kyiv would get per month, but as IntelliNews reported, even the 300 he was asking for – more than a third of the remains US stockpile – is woefully inadequate to offer Ukraine’s main cities protection from the deluge of Russian ballistic missiles. Former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview over the weekend that Russia makes more missiles in a week than Ukraine’s Western partners have been sending it in months, even before the current shortage kicked in.

 

Managing expectations, Zelenskiy went out of his way to caution that the agreed monthly allocations would still fall short of Ukraine's operational requirements. "There will be fewer of these missiles in 2026," he said.

The delivery of missiles is like to number in the tens, not the hundreds, and as such will be little more than another gesture in the “some, but not enough” Western policy of supplying Ukraine with significant weapons, but always too few and too late. As IntelliNews reported, even the 300 missiles Zelenskiy asked for previously would last only between 4-8 weeks after Russia has doubled the number of missiles it fires at Ukraine in just last month.

Ukraine has repeatedly warned that shortages of interceptor missiles are becoming one of its biggest military vulnerabilities.

The Kremlin maintains that increased deliveries of advanced Western weapons merely deepen Nato's involvement in the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that "the entire West" was assisting Ukraine. "They haven't yet reached the point of launching anything from their territory. They understand there will be a retaliatory strike. Everyone understands, or should understand."

Putin added: "We must strengthen our security, strengthen our missile defence system, strengthen our air defences, and we will do so."

At the same time it is widely expected that the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) will launch a major missile campaign against Ukraine’s remaining power facilities this winter in a repeated attempt to freeze Ukraine into submission. Ukrainian officials fear that this year the campaign will be expanded to include water and sewage infrastructure.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that longer-range Western weapons would force Russia to push Ukrainian military infrastructure farther from its borders.

"There will be more destruction in Ukraine, because, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said, if the range of weapons increases, the sanitary, buffer security zone—whatever you want to call it—will expand, which will be necessary to protect our territory and our citizens."

Zelenskiy's announcement came during his first official visit to Serbia, where he and Vučić focused publicly on strengthening economic ties and cooperation on energy, infrastructure and Ukraine's resilience ahead of another winter of Russian attacks. Military cooperation was not announced during the visit, reflecting Belgrade's continued attempt to balance its traditional relationship with Moscow against its aspirations for European Union membership.