Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that he had received a Patriot air-defense system from Israel and that it was already in operation, defending against Russian strikes.
“The Israeli system is operating in Ukraine for a month,” Zelensky told reporters. “We will received [another] two Patriot systems in the fall, that’s all I’m going to say.”
While the Ukrainian president appeared to try to present the move as if the system was supplied directly by Israel, officials in Jerusalem have disputed this.
In May, The New York Times first reported that Washington had requested that Israel return an outdated Patriot system to the US for refurbishment, which would later be supplied by the Americans to Kyiv.
The plan was initially brokered by the Biden administration and involved an older model Patriot system.
In January, it was reported that the US took 90 Patriot interceptors out of storage in Israel and sent them to Poland to pass on to Ukraine.
The Israeli Air Force said last year it was decommissioning the Patriot systems, to be replaced with more advanced air defenses.
The US has since deployed its advanced THAAD interceptors in Israel, alongside Israel’s own multi-level array that includes the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow air defense systems.
In addition to the Patriot from Israel, the US was seeking to transfer to Ukraine another system from Germany or Greece, according to the May report.
Ukraine then had eight Patriot systems, and has asked repeatedly for more since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
The issue of Israel supplying arms to Ukraine has been a thorny one.
Israel has resisted providing weapons to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in February 2022, saying it needed to avoid jeopardizing diplomatic relations with Moscow.
A second main reason given at the start of the war was the strategic need to maintain freedom of operations in Syria, where Russian forces largely controlled the airspace.
However, this has changed since the fall of the Moscow-allied Assad regime last year.
In June, Israel issued a formal denial that it had directly supplied the Patriot system to Ukraine, after the Israeli envoy to Kyiv indicated that it had.
“It is not correct,” said the Foreign Ministry in a statement. “Israel did not transfer Patriot systems to Ukraine.”
The denial came after Ambassador Michael Brodsky told a Ukrainian YouTube channel that Jerusalem had sent the missiles to Ukraine.
“These systems are now in Ukraine,” said Brodsky. “Israeli systems that were in service in the early 1990s, we agreed to transfer them to Ukraine, and unfortunately, we did not talk about it very much.”
Also on Saturday, Zelensky said he was sending a delegation to the US in a bid to secure additional weapons and discuss economic issues.
Zelensky was in the United States this week, where he participated in the UN General Assembly and met US President Donald Trump.
He said that he shared with Trump “a certain vision of what could be done” to respond to Russia’s actions, vowing to retaliate if Moscow causes a blackout in Ukraine.