I wish you health, dear Ukrainians!
The first is anti-ballistics. Our FREYJA program – a joint European anti-ballistic system – is already in active operation. There are ten countries, our partners will join. Those partners who can really support. We have already agreed on this. I am grateful to all the companies that are ready to work within the framework of the Anti-Ballistic Coalition. These are leading European companies. Ukraine is able to make its own missile and launcher, the partners will provide the necessary components and critical elements: radars, sensors, and other things that are needed. Everyone in Europe will be greatly helped by its own and truly large-scale anti-ballistic program. Today we went through in detail what is still needed – what steps from our state, what from our partners, so that Ukrainian weapons manufacturers, Ukrainian developers can provide a real result. A minimum of countries in the world have made such an anti-ballistic project for themselves. Ukraine must join this circle of states. We are creating all the conditions for this. Others have been doing their own developments for decades. Ukraine must do this as quickly as possible, so that by the turn of 26-27 there will be concrete results. And Ukraine is working to ensure that we have our own ballistic missiles. The tests have shown good prospects. We need to do this with real weapons. The National Security and Defense Council, our intelligence, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Defense, the Air Force, the Brave1 defense cluster - all the structures of our state are involved. But now the number one challenge is Russian strikes, which means that every Ukrainian diplomat, all our Ukrainian government officials, the Ministry of Defense must know where in the world there are PAC-2, PAC-3 missiles for Patriots, other missiles for air defense. We need direct conversations, direct contacts, new agreements, I expect that everything we talked about with our government officials will be implemented. The United States knows exactly what we need and that this is not about something abstract. This is the protection of our lives. These are specific, real people. We need air defense, and this requires political decisions. In Europe too. In the G7 countries too. We work on this every day. I spoke with the Prime Minister of Norway today, primarily about air defense. Yesterday we spoke with Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, and with the President of Finland. We coordinated our activities and contacts with other partners.
Today we discussed the situation regarding sanctions against Russia – against those enterprises, those individuals who work for the production of ballistics in Russia, for the import of critical components. Unfortunately, in many countries there are still gaps in the sanctions lists. I expect that Ukrainian government officials and special services, our intelligence will now join forces as much as possible, work with partners, so that in September we can really see that every jurisdiction that truly has influence and global significance has completely blocked ties with Russian manufacturers of all their weapons. This also applies to suppliers of components, machine tools, and those who help Russia circumvent financial and trade restrictions. It is unacceptable that even now the Russian industry, which works for murder, has access to world jurisdictions. It must be blocked. I will be grateful to all our partners who will support this work.
And one more thing.
Today, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has already adopted the first decisions from the support package for farmers - producers, who are currently in a difficult situation due to Russian attacks on our ports and the sea corridor. Prime Minister Koretsky reported on what quite practical things will work in the coming days. In particular, preferential loans were adopted today at a government meeting, and portfolio guarantees will also be adopted in the near future. That is, specific financing to increase all possibilities, all volumes for storage. There will be additional decisions. It is also important that the Prime Minister adopted the necessary decisions for Marganets and other cities in the Dnipro region. The situation was shameful, absolutely shameful due to the lack of water there and the very slow reaction at the regional level, which is responsible for providing water. The person responsible will be dismissed. I expect that the regional and local authorities will stay awake and respond much faster to the needs of the people. Wartime is a 24/7 work time. Thank you to those who work in this way for the sake of Ukrainians! Work is currently underway in Kherson with electricity, to restore it. The situation is very difficult - constant shelling. But they will do everything. They will do everything so that people have electricity. This is very important.
Glory to Ukraine!