KYIV, May 31, 2026 — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed Sunday that a landmark drone technology agreement between Ukraine and the United States remains unsigned — despite Ukraine having accepted all of Washington’s conditions for testing and evaluating its systems — and said the only thing standing between the two countries and the most powerful military technology partnership in the world is a word from President Donald Trump.
“We need President Trump to say yes,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, summarizing his remarks from a CBS News Face the Nation interview. “We wanted to conclude the first Drone Deal with the United States. The U.S. wanted to test all types of our drones. We agreed to the way they wanted to test, train with, and use our systems in the air, on land, and at sea. But we still don’t have a bilateral Drone Deal — a big framework document.”
What Ukraine Has Already Agreed To
Zelenskyy said Ukraine accepted a U.S.-designed protocol for evaluating its drone systems across all domains — aerial, land-based, and maritime — and signed off on the document without reservation. “I accepted this way,” he told CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan in the full Face the Nation transcript. Despite that acceptance, the comprehensive bilateral framework agreement — which Zelenskyy described as “a big document” — has not been concluded.
Ukraine has already signed drone deals with Middle Eastern countries and several European nations, and is currently preparing a major drone agreement with the European Union. The U.S. deal, which Zelenskyy described as the most strategically significant of all, remains the exception.
What Each Side Brings
Zelenskyy made the case for the deal in explicit terms — framing it not as a request for American charity but as a mutual exchange of capabilities that neither country possesses alone. “American companies have advanced AI technologies we don’t have,” he wrote on X. “In turn, we have many things they don’t have, due to our extensive experience on the battlefield.”
That battlefield experience is not hypothetical. Ukrainian forces have developed arguably the most advanced combat drone program in the world through four years of sustained high-intensity warfare — including first-person-view attack drones, naval surface drones that have sunk Russian warships, long-range strike drones capable of hitting targets deep inside Russia, and an AI-integrated air defense drone interception system that has no equivalent in any NATO country’s arsenal.
When Brennan asked whether Ukraine could use its technological edge to counter Russian ballistic missiles without U.S. support, Zelenskyy pointed to a recent practical demonstration. Ukraine sent more than 200 of its experts and systems to the Middle East to help defend American military bases and allied infrastructure against Iranian attacks. “Such a level of interceptors and different kinds of radars, systems of electronic warfare, nobody has,” he said. “And secretary is right” — referring to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s statement that the Ukrainian battlefield is “the Silicon Valley of War.”
‘The Most Powerful of Its Kind in the World’
Zelenskyy described the potential U.S.-Ukraine drone partnership in sweeping terms. “I think this cooperation can be huge — the most powerful of its kind in the world,” he wrote. “We need to negotiate, not just talk about it. Take the necessary steps and do it as quickly as possible.”
The urgency reflects a broader strategic calculation. Ukraine’s drone capabilities, developed at enormous human cost, represent a living laboratory for modern warfare that American technology companies and defense contractors have been eager to access. A formal bilateral framework would structure that access — and could accelerate the development of AI-enabled drone systems that both countries need for future conflicts.
Zelenskyy has held multiple conversations with Silicon Valley technology executives and U.S. defense companies about this cooperation, and said he wants to move from discussions to concrete agreements. “American technological companies, they have a lot of different interesting AI technologies, what we don’t have,” he told Brennan. “I think this cooperation can be the most powerful in the world. So we need to negotiate already, not to speak about it, just to make steps, and to do it as quick as possible.”
The deal, Zelenskyy made clear, awaits a single decision. “For this, we need President Trump to say yes.”