President Trump backtracked on Friday from a promise earlier this month to let Ukraine make Patriot missiles, weapons that were sorely needed as a defense interceptor against Russia\u2019s deadly ballistic missile attacks.<\/p>\n
On July 8, Mr. Trump had unexpectedly assented to sharing technology<\/a> behind the missiles to allow Ukraine to build them, saying that \u201cwe\u2019ll give them the right to make Patriots\u201d during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the sidelines of the NATO summit meeting in Ankara, Turkey. He added: \u201cWe\u2019ll show them how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked about the agreement during a meeting with his cabinet on Friday, Mr. Trump said \u201cwe have not agreed to that,\u201d suggesting that he had changed his mind because \u201cit is a hard thing to give away that kind of technology\u201d and because of the risk that \u201cthose people you give the technology, they could someday turn on you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou look at war, it has happened a couple of times over the years,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cSo we have to be very careful. We guard that.\u201d<\/p>\n An agreement to allow Ukraine to build the Patriot missiles would require the U.S. government to share its defense technology and for the defense firms that build the systems, including Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, to work with the Ukrainians to manufacture the weapons. Such a project could take months or years, and any defense facility Ukraine builds to manufacture its own Patriots would quickly become a target of Moscow.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump, who held a closed-door meeting with Mr. Zelensky<\/a> earlier this week, told The Financial Times on Thursday that he was \u201cnot sure\u201d about allowing Kyiv to move forward with plans to license the weapons. Mr. Zelensky, for his part, said that he and Mr. Trump \u201cdiscussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help.\u201d<\/p>\n Continuing a mercurial pattern on the war in Ukraine \u2014 sometimes supportive of Ukraine\u2019s war effort, and other times sympathetic to the position of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia<\/a> \u2014 Mr. Trump appeared on Friday to criticize President Joseph R. Biden Jr.\u2019s efforts to arm Ukraine, even as he acknowledged that he himself had given weapons to the country.<\/p>\n