Ukraine Bought the Missiles. Washington Has Not Released Them Yet

Ukraine says it has been waiting nearly a month for the United States to release air-defence missiles that NATO allies have already paid for. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, 26 October, that the Patriot and NASAMS interceptors were funded through NATO's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List programme, the money is available and the weapons have been ordered — but final American authorization from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is still pending.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that a scheduled shipment may have been delayed, but denied that Washington was deliberately withholding the weapons for political reasons. There is no publicly available evidence that Hegseth personally ordered a delay as leverage against Kyiv. What is confirmed is that the approval process has taken far longer than Ukraine expected, while Russia keeps pounding Ukraine's energy system.
The delay follows other disruptions in American assistance during October, as relations between Washington and Kyiv grew more strained and President Donald Trump criticized Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. For Ukraine, the interceptors are not abstract hardware — they are the missiles that shoot down the drones and missiles hitting its cities and power grid every night. Until the authorization comes through, the weapons Ukraine has already bought stay out of reach.
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