On Wednesday EU leadership revealed that the Zelensky government has formally asked the European Commission to provide several billion euros from the EU’s €90 billion ($105 billion) support loan to purchase US-made Patriot air defense missiles.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced just ahead of a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, "It is worth several billion euros and would cover Ukraine’s air defense needs, including high-end PAC-3 air defense systems."
via EU CouncilAt the same time, the EU’s top foreign affairs official, Kaja Kallas, is coming off a meeting of the bloc's defense ministers wherein she cited no progress made on the Patriot funding plan.
"There were calls and talks about these missiles but there was, unfortunately, no concrete success today regarding this," the EU top diplomat had spelled out Tuesday. "Patriot missiles about to expire [by Nato standards] should be sent to Ukraine."
Looking back further, the last time that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in the White House, he pleaded with President Trump for a "winter package" of 300 Patriot missiles.
Zelensky has long been warning that cities remain largely unprotected against Russia's more advanced ballistic missile arsenal - a problem that only mass supplies of Patriots can remedy.
Ukraine's supply have run dry, with batteries sitting in some locations, unable to be fired.
In mid-August, here's what a CNN team observed on the ground in
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