On the same day that Russia pounded Kyiv for the third time in a week, Ukraine’s president was 1,200 kilometers away, pleading for permission to build the weapons that would stop, or at least blunt, Russia’s worst pounding.Ukraine needs a lot of things these days, as it struggles to hold back Russia’s 52-month-old all-out invasion. What it needs most of all, however, is a way to shoot down the most destructive weaponry Russia is firing: ballistic missiles.Until recently, the US-supplied Patriot air defense system was considered the only reliable way to intercept ballistic missiles. But Ukrainian stockpiles of the system’s interceptors are running low as US stockpiles have dwindled -- the result of US forces in the Middle East defending against Iranian attacks.Kyiv now wants to manufacture its own interceptors for the Patriot system. The problem? It needs the US to give it a license to do so.On July 8, Volodymyr Zelenskyy got a thumbs-up.“We’ll give them the right to make Patriots,” Trump said, sitting alongside Zelenskyy on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey.“We’re going to be giving a license to you to make Patriots,” he said. “This way you can’t complain we’re not giving them enough. I’ll say: ‘Well, make them yourself.’”