Zelensky asks Europe for 300 Patriot interceptors in Brussels, and Trump says he did not slow Ukraine's Starlink

Zelensky came to Brussels with a shopping list, and he read it out in public because the private channels are not delivering.

Speaking at the European Council summit on Friday, the Ukrainian president asked for a winter package centred on 300 Patriot interceptors for use against Russian ballistic missiles. He said most PAC 2 and PAC 3 interceptors are now going to the Middle East, that Ukraine is not the priority destination, and that supplies through the European funded PURL programme continue but do not close the gap. He put the wider bill plainly: the war will cost about 155 billion euros next year, and Ukraine needs at least 70 billion of it from Europe for defence and weapons. Kyiv could build three times as many drones as it does now, he said, if the money existed. European stocks are the immediate question. Spain and Greece both hold Patriots, and diplomats say both have reasons of their own to hesitate before giving them up.

The Starlink dispute ran in parallel all day, and it ended the day less clear than it began. Zelensky said the military Starshield service was not switched off, but its speed was cut, which left interceptor drones too slow to catch jet powered Shahed drones and disrupted supply runs to the front. The speed is coming back, he said, but it has not been fully restored. Reuters reported on Thursday that the White House ordered the slowdown, citing American and Western officials. On Friday, leaving the White House for Georgia, Trump denied it directly. He said he did not do it, that the United States did not slow it down at all, and that he did not think it had been slowed. An administration official told the New York Post the slowdown, if it happened, was Pentagon freelancing. The Pentagon has not commented. Elon Musk has said any decision to limit Starshield was the president's to make, and a senior American official told CNN Trump made no such request.

Underneath the argument sits the fact this site reported on Friday morning: Ukraine's Patriot magazines are empty, and Russia attacked again overnight with, by Ukrainian counts, hundreds of drones and a salvo of missiles against energy sites. Zelensky thanked the EU leaders as real leaders, a phrase aimed as much at Washington as at Brussels, and warned that Russian drone incursions into NATO countries are tests of Europe's response. Europe can write cheques and open its stockpiles. It cannot manufacture Patriot interceptors at the rate this war is using them, and everyone in the room in Brussels knows whose factories those are. The picture with this story is an illustration of the Brussels summit, not a photograph.