Ukraine to use foreign aid on long-range missile production, Zelenskyy says

Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the European Union summit, Zelenskyy was commenting on the EU mechanism of extending Ukraine a “reparatory loan,” which would have to be repaid only after Moscow agrees to pay actual war reparations.

“I’m not sure I’m saying anything completely new,” the president said.

“But today we already have a clear plan for using domestically produced long-range systems. We will deploy Ukrainian-made weapons with ranges from 150 to 3,000 kilometers.”

Zelenskyy said the biggest challenge now is securing additional financing to scale the production of these systems.

He added that using frozen Russian assets would benefit not only Ukraine’s defense but also European partners.

“The issue of using [Russian] assets is very important for us,” he said.

“We will partially use them for Ukrainian production and, of course, for our European partners’ production.”

On Sept. 18, Reuters reported the EU leadership is developing a plan to use frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine with what they described as a “reparatory loan.”

Earlier this week, however, the United States told Europe it is not joining the initiative, citing market stability concerns. Although the amount of Russian assets frozen in the United States is insignificant compared to Euroclear’s (Belgian clearing house) $140 billion, Washington endorsing the mechanism could have helped convince EU members states who are still on the fence.