Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his nation is in urgent need of anti-ballistic missiles from the United States to shoot down an increasing number of attacks from Russia.
Speaking in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS on “Face the Nation,” Zelenskyy said: “This is the priority for us, and big, big challenge. We had a very difficult, tough winter. Russia attacked us by lots of ballistic missiles on our energy infrastructure, water supply, schools. It was, it was very difficult. Now, we see big deficit.”
Zelenskyy said he reached out to the White House and Congress in recent days about the deadly Russian projectiles raining down on his nation.
“I sent a letter to the White House and Congress of the United States,” he said, “and I hope that they will understand and will answer, respond. And this is very important. We need to increase the production. I know all the companies in the United States, huge companies, great companies, but only United States can produce such number.”
American military supplies have been used in great quantity in the current war with Iran. Zelenskyy acknowledged that the Iran war had strained U.S. resources and had drawn the public’s attention from the Russia-Ukraine war, calling for an increase in production to address what he described as a “big deficit” between Russia’s ballistic and anti-ballistic capacity and Ukraine’s.
He also mentioned that Ukraine, when called upon, had offered assistance to those facing Iranian attacks in the Middle East.
“When we’ve got messages to help in the Middle East to defend some bases with American soldiers and also infrastructure of Middle East countries like Saudi or Emirates, etc., and I came with our groups, we sent more than 200 of our experts,” he told host Margaret Brennan.
The Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022, but Zelenskyy told Brennan that Putin has ratcheted up his use of drones and missiles more recently because Russia’s efforts on the ground have stalled.
“It began in December 2025,” Zelenskyy said. “Russia began to lose initiative on the battlefield. And from this point of view, I shared this information with our American partners. I said to them in January, ‘I think that we have window for the negotiations because each month they will lose more and more people, and they will lose, because of these reasons, they will lose initiative on the battlefield.’”
“Now they began attack us with massive missiles attacks, and, again, the main reason why they did it: because they begin to lose on the battlefield,” he said.