Volodimir Zelenski visited the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday to meet with Donald Trump in a diplomatic meeting that addressed two central issues: licenses for producing Patriot interceptors and the need to reactivate peace negotiations with Russia, as confirmed by the Ukrainian president himself on his social media.
Zelensky opened the meeting with a personal gesture: to convey to Trump his condolences for the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, who passed away on July 12 from an aortic dissection at the age of 71.
"He was a true friend of Ukraine," wrote the Ukrainian president, who also described him as "a true defender of freedom." Graham had visited Ukraine ten times since the Russian invasion in 2022 and was regarded as Kyiv's main interlocutor in the U.S. Senate.
Regarding military matters, the two leaders discussed the licenses for the manufacture of Patriot interceptors, announced by Trump on July 8 at the NATO summit in Ankara.
On that occasion, the U.S. president had stated, "We are going to give you a license to manufacture Patriots. We will show you how to do it." Experts then warned that the process could take between six months and a year just in paperwork, and additional years for actual production.
Zelenski noted that "several other ideas that could help" were also explored, although no additional concrete commitments were announced. The teams from both governments were tasked with coordinating the details.
«It is important that the diplomatic process is revitalized», emphasized the Ukrainian leader, at a time when the Kremlin declared on July 16 that there was no immediate prospect of resuming formal peace talks.
The military context that Zelenski brought to Washington was particularly compelling.
On July 23, a Russian fighter-bomber Su-57 —the most advanced fifth-generation stealth aircraft from Russia, valued at approximately 100 million dollars per unit— crashed in the Odintsovo district, west of Moscow.
Russia attributed the incident to a "technical failure" during a training flight, but Ukrainian sources and military analysts pointed to a more disturbing explanation: the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) allegedly hacked into the Russian air defense network, causing a Russian surface-to-air missile to shoot down its own aircraft.
Two days later, on July 25, Ukraine carried out long-range attacks in the Caspian Sea against vessels linked to the transport of military cargo between Iran and Russia. Iran accused Kiev of the attack, reported one sailor dead, and warned of consequences.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, in an analysis published in The Telegraph, argued that both events could mark a decisive turning point: "If the Kremlin cannot guarantee the security of its own capital nor protect its most sophisticated aircraft from being destroyed in its own airspace, then the aura of invincibility that has supported Putin's regime for a quarter of a century begins to crumble."
The tense meeting between Trump and Zelenski in February 2025, which ended without agreement, and the subsequent pause in U.S. military aid marked the lowest point in the bilateral relationship. This Tuesday, the tone was notably different. “I am grateful to the United States for its steadfast support,” Zelenski wrote at the conclusion of the meeting.
De Bretton-Gordon summed up the moment with a historical comparison: "Napoleon's fate was sealed at Waterloo. Putin's Waterloo may not be on the steppes of eastern Ukraine, but much closer to home, in Moscow itself."
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