To protect the country from constant Russian air attacks, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky plans to order an additional 25 Patriot air defense systems from the United States.

He said this in an interview with The Guardian.

At the same time, the Head of State proposed a scheme that could speed up the process of transferring this type of weaponry to Ukraine.

“As of today, we want to order 25 Patriot systems from the United States. For us, this is a clear budget, and we understand what kind of money it involves, but we are lacking certain elements in this agreement. Our European partners could help us here — they can give us their systems now and later take back ours when they arrive from the manufacturers. These systems take several years to produce, and we wouldn’t want to wait”, — the President explained.

He also noted that under certain conditions, Ukraine is capable of getting closer to “closing the sky”.

“When we talk about closing the sky today — it’s a multi-layered closure. It requires modern aviation and interceptor drones. We already have several companies that are producing them, and we are already making them. The latest ones we have launched together with the British — OCTOPUS is one of the drones we will produce jointly. And this concerns the Sky Shield, which is why we need it very much”, — the Ukrainian leader emphasized.