Ukraine to ramp up arms production for symmetrical response to Russia, Zelensky says
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on May 27 that Ukraine is fully mobilizing its domestic industrial base to scale up production of drones, missiles, and other weapons systems, as the country braces for continued large-scale Russian attacks.
From May 24 to 26, Russian forces fired more than 600 drones and dozens of missiles across Ukraine, with the third night amounting to the single largest drone attack of the full-scale war.
Zelensky’s remarks followed a high-level meeting with Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, Chief of the General Staff Anatolii Hnatov, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
“The agenda included planning our actions, our readiness to respond to Russian strikes, to their threats, and taking preventive measures, which means increasing the production of our drones and our missiles,” the president said during his evening address.
He added that “hundreds of Ukrainian companies are already producing results for Ukraine’s Defense Forces, with more to follow.” Zelensky said the government is fully mobilizing “entrepreneurial capacity for weapons production” and plans to sign new agreements with European partners to attract investment, focusing on unmanned systems and long-range capabilities.
While the government cannot publicly disclose its existing plans or capabilities, Zelensky emphasized that Ukraine must “respond symmetrically to all Russian threats” and Moscow must “clearly feel the consequences of what they are doing against Ukraine. And they will."
“Attack drones, interceptors, cruise missiles, Ukrainian ballistic systems – these are the key elements. We must manufacture all of them,” he said.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has spent months trying to broker a peace deal in Ukraine. However, direct talks in Istanbul failed to yield a ceasefire, and during a May 19 phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin once again rejected calls for a 30-day truce.
Despite this, Trump has refused to impose new sanctions on Moscow so far, but said on May 25 that new sanctions could be on the table: “I’ve always gotten along with him,” Trump said of Putin. “But he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people (…) We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities. I don’t like it at all."
The Kyiv IndependentDominic Culverwell