Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spent an entire day in Washington amid a shortage of Patriot interceptors. The Ukrainian president met representatives of the American defense company Lockheed Martin, which makes ATACMS missiles, HIMARS rocket systems, and Patriot air-defense interceptors, during his 28 July visit to the US, he wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskyy's Washington trip layered defense-industry diplomacy over a funeral. He came for the memorial of Senator Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly on 11 July at 71 and was among Kyiv's most influential and outspoken allies in the US Congress.
On the same day, the Senate moved to advance a Russia sanctions bill, renamed the "Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026" in his honor, with a procedural vote set for Tuesday evening, at which Zelenskyy was to address senators beforehand, according to Bloomberg. Zelenskyy also met with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
The Lockheed talks are about building weapons together
Zelenskyy framed the Lockheed Martin meeting as the same joint-production effort he has been pressing across the US defense industry. He discussed further developing cooperation through joint production and technology exchange, he said.
"Ukraine has something to share with those who help us protect lives. We talked about our joint capabilities regarding Patriot and other systems," Zelenskyy wrote.
Teams are already working on concrete solutions to move to joint production as quickly as possible and increase Ukraine's ability to protect lives, he added.
The meeting pairs with several days earlier. On 22 July, Zelenskyy met a team from Raytheon, the Patriot's other manufacturer, and said Ukraine was negotiating joint production of Patriot interceptors. Meeting both Patriot makers within a week, Ukraine is pressing the companies on production, after Trump pledged at the Ankara NATO summit on 8 July to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriots, a promise the manufacturers said this month they had barely begun to act on.
The sanctions bill is the day's larger stakes
Shortly after midnight Kyiv time, Zelenskyy is expected to address US senators ahead of a procedural vote on a bipartisan bill imposing sanctions on Russia.
The legislation advancing in Graham's name is among the most consequential Russia measures the US Congress has produced. A bipartisan group of senators announced on 28 July that they had finalized the bill's language, and Senate leaders scheduled a procedural vote for that evening.
It would allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 500% on goods imported directly from Russia and up to 100% on imports from the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, as well as from countries that help Russia evade sanctions. It also targets Russian officials, oligarchs, banks, and the shadow fleet, bars Russian uranium imports, and extends Iran sanctions. With more than 60 cosponsors, it is expected to pass the Senate, though the House is in recess until 31 August, so it will not reach Trump's desk until after that.
However, the bill carries a real geopolitical cost of its own. The secondary tariffs would fall hardest on China and India, the biggest buyers of Russian energy, and the measure could strain already-unstable US trade relations with both. That is the tension built into the tribute to Graham: the bill that bears his name would squeeze Russia's war revenue by pressuring the countries that keep it flowing, at the cost of a confrontation with two of the world's largest economies.
