Trump says war in Ukraine depleted US weapons reserves, but as Iran takes over, kyiv sees opportunities

Kyiv — The White House wants Congress to provide at least $200 billion more in funding for the war in Iran, and President Trump says that’s partly because aid to Ukraine has depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles while defending Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion.

“This is a very volatile world,” Trump said Thursday. “We want to have large amounts of ammunition, and we have it right now; we have a lot of ammunition, but it was lost by giving so much to Ukraine.”

Throughout his second term, Trump has criticized the Biden administration for, in his view, providing weapons to Ukraine that the US defense industry was unable to quickly replenish.

Last summer, after a review of reserves, the U.S. stopped the shipment of some weapons to Ukraine. Those arms transfers were eventually restored under a new initiative that has NATO allies footing much of the bill, but the episode made clear that the White House views support for Ukraine’s defense as an obstacle to ensuring that the United States’ own defensive stockpiles remain up to the demands of any future conflict.

Now, however, Ukraine offers reasons to reevaluate that view. As the war in Iran depletes U.S. stocks of interceptor missiles, Ukrainian officials are offering deals to help replenish them. On Saturday, Ukrainian officials met with representatives of the Trump administration to discuss, among other issues, an agreement for the two countries to co-produce drones and drone interceptors.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the deal could be worth between $35 billion and $50 billion. He has also said that there are several other potential deals in the works with US allies in the Persian Gulf, whose Urgent need for Ukrainian drone interceptors. has become a public issue amid Iran’s incessant attacks.

But experts say the deals currently materializing go beyond immediate air defense needs in the Middle East and could lay the groundwork for longer-term defense industrial partnerships between the United States and Ukraine.

Iran war devours Patriot interceptor missiles much faster than Ukraine

Shortly after the United States began providing weapons from its own arsenal to Ukraine in 2022, concerns arose about the American defense industry’s ability to replace them. Most alarming was the potential shortage of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptor missiles, which are among the most effective weapons for shooting down incoming ballistic missiles.

“We realized that we now had a defense industrial base without excess capacity to meet wartime needs,” Matt Tavares, a defense analyst who served as a Pentagon adviser during multiple administrations, told News themezone. “Some of the equipment we delivered to the Ukrainians could not be immediately resupplied by the defense industry.”

When President Trump returned to power in 2025, his administration promised to boost production of air defense munitions and be more prudent in distributing them to allies. Starting last summer, some military shipments were redirected, including 20,000 anti-drone missiles originally intended for Ukraine that were instead sent to US Air Force units in the Middle East.

In January, the Pentagon announced a deal with Lockheed Martin to triple production of Patriot interceptors.

But the war in Iran has complicated the Defense Department’s weapons conservation efforts.

America’s allies in the Middle East burned 800 Patriot interceptors while fending off retaliatory strikes from Iran during the first week of the war alone, according to Zelenskyy, who noted that his country had used only 600 Patriots during four years of war with Russia.

Experts have said the rapid use of these expensive munitions is likely driving, at least in part, the White House’s request for another $200 billion from Congress, which is nearly four times the $70 billion in military aid provided to Ukraine since 2022.

“To the extent that American stockpiles are being depleted, it has much more to do with what has been happening in the Middle East over the last nine months than what has happened in Ukraine,” Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told News themezone.

Can Ukraine offer long-term solutions to bolster U.S. weapons arsenals?

As Iran’s war depletes interceptor reserves, the United States and its Gulf allies have turned to Ukraine for its drone defense expertise. President Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine sent more than 200 drone experts to the Middle East to help defend military installations and civilian centers from Iranian attacks.

In return, the Ukrainians hope to receive more Western interceptor missiles that have been so crucial to their own air defense. Asked by reporters last week in kyiv whether missile shipments from the United States and Europe to Ukraine could be further affected because of the war with Iran, Zelenskyy said “the risk is very high” and emphasized that getting more Patriot missiles was “our priority.”

But the agreements currently brewing between kyiv and Washington, and between kyiv and the Gulf States, are unlikely to result in direct arms exchanges to bolster the air defenses of Ukraine or the Middle East any time soon.

“The problem is how quickly we can produce Patriot interceptors. I imagine the Gulf, right now, wants to hold on to its entire stockpile of interceptors because it doesn’t know when they will be replenished,” Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told News themezone.

He said that for Ukraine, it could be more about long-term gains.

“There’s a way they could partner on drones, get that capital investment, and then that money flowing into the defense sector can be used to develop specific things like long-range strikes or air defense expertise,” Massicot said.

That kind of deal could also prove equally politically beneficial to kyiv, even if it doesn’t help meet its immediate war needs.

“This could be a moment where Ukrainians helping here spark some goodwill from the United States and show that they are a taxpayer and not just a drain on security resources,” Karako said.