CBS’s Margaret Brennan interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a portion of which aired on “Face the Nation,” where he asked the U.S. for more support with anti-ballistic missiles. MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. These are the European-funded weapons program that NATO administers, but they’re American-produced interceptors. I understand that. But you know, Secretary of State Rubio recently said that Ukraine has the strongest military in all of Europe. The Army Secretary of the United States called the Ukrainian battlefield the Silicon Valley of War, praising how you’ve integrated AI and anti-drone technology. So, you have this edge on this type of warfare. Can you use it in any way to take down these Russian missiles, or are you solely dependent on American manufacturing to help? PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY: I can give you one example very quickly. 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- with our groups, we sent more than 200 of our experts. Such a level of [UNINTELLIGIBLE] and different kind of interceptors, radars, systems of electronic warfare, nobody has. And secretary is right. So we have- and we can destroy all kinds of drones, we can destroy a lot of different missiles, but we don’t have, still, in our total programming system, we don’t have anti-ballistic. This is the biggest problem. Yes, we are on the way. By the way, I wanted to say, we will build it, I know, but we need time for this. But during this time, we lose people. So, what we can give the United States? All the things what we have, and what United States, for example, doesn’t, like cheap interceptors, a lot of different kinds, different military, different AI drones, and etc. So, but we don’t have anti-ballistic, and the United States has anti-ballistic systems. What we want? We want to share, we want to give everything what we have. And we remember that United States helped us from the very beginning of this war, so of course we are very thankful, and we are ready to share what we have. But until the moment we will produce our European anti-ballistic system, until this moment, we need support from the United States. MARGARET BRENNAN: Is there any offer from Europe to take down these ballistic missiles? Is there any hope other than the provision of more patriots? PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY: Between us, Europeans gave us some systems. It was the second year of the war, but it was, again, it was about the American system patriots. Also France and Italy, they have one system, SAMP/T, it’s good system, but they also need to increase the production, because nobody knew that will be this year- will be such big war, nobody counted on this. So everybody has to increase the production. It’s time. It’s all about time. It’s a pity, but it’s true.

RealClearPolitics Videos