According to him, Kyiv’s European allies do not have such weapons, but they are urgently needed in Ukraine to protect against attacks from the aggressor country, Russia.
“We ourselves will propose how we see it. Then the American side will analyze all this. Perhaps it will reduce something, maybe not – and answer us. We agreed to do this in the near future,” the head of state indicated.
Zelensky explained what tasks THAAD would solve to protect Ukrainian territories.
“Then, for example, the threat of Russian aerial bombs simply would not exist in Ukraine. We would definitely have eliminated this threat for at least 200 km. Russian planes simply would not have flown in – that’s all,” he said.
Context
THAAD is an American long-range missile defense system manufactured by Lockheed Martin; the media wrote in December 2023 that it is on the list of weapons that Ukraine wants to receive from its allies. But there were no public discussions regarding their transfer after that. In October 2024, the US announced that This is the first time such a system has been deployed in Israel.
When the Russian Federation attacked Ukraine with a new ballistic missile, the speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Georgy Tikhy, was asked about the possibility of transferring the THAAD complex to Ukraine.
“It's too early to reveal details. I'll just say that There are several such systems in the world. And we believe that any system that is capable of countering such threats should be in Ukraine. It is logical for these systems to be located here and work to protect people’s lives, infrastructure and the state. Therefore, we will convince, we will work with partners,” he emphasized.
