Ukraine's president is asking Washington to release missiles that Europe has already approved. In a video address on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: "We need to unblock the deliveries of Patriot interceptors already approved by European countries." Support for the people protecting Ukrainian lives, he said, must not diminish alongside the negotiation process — every defence package, especially ahead of winter, helps save lives.
The hold-up, as Kyiv tells it, is not production. European countries, through NATO's PURL programme and bilateral transfers, have approved and paid for batches of the U.S.-made interceptors — but American authorisation is required before they can be handed over, and Ukrainian officials say the signature they are waiting on is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's. The numbers explain the urgency: Ukraine has received only about 24 U.S. Patriot interceptors in the past 90 days, against a stated need of roughly 350 a month; a winter package requested in mid-October sought some 300 PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors.
The appeal follows another deadly night. Russian strikes into Sunday killed four people and injured 22, including an 11-year-old girl, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, with further hits reported in Vinnytsia, where an apartment building was struck, and in Kharkiv. By Kyiv's count, Russia launched some 1,600 guided aerial bombs, 48 missiles and nearly 2,300 attack drones at Ukraine in the past week alone.
On the other side of the table, Moscow set its own date. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, speaking on Russian state television on Sunday, said: "The next deadline is now Nov. 4, our major holiday. After that, we will be ready to resume negotiations." The format he described is the three-way one — Russia, Ukraine and the United States — with the first meeting after the pause likely an exploratory "trial run" rather than a session that produces a settlement, and a full peace agreement, in his words, still needing work. Europe, Ushakov added, must be part of the broader discussion: "it is not enough to talk only to Kyiv; we need to talk to the whole of Europe, which fully supports Kyiv," and Europe's position "could be crucial."
The two clocks are now running together. Zelenskyy said on October 23 that a new round of three-way talks is expected in the first half of November, with Abu Dhabi mentioned as a possible venue, and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met both sides earlier this week. Neither Kyiv nor Washington had publicly answered Ushakov's Sunday remarks as they were made. What is clear is the shape of the bargain forming: Ukraine wants its air defence unblocked before the talks resume, and Moscow wants Europe inside the room when they do.
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