OPEN LETTER: Mr Hegseth, your interceptors are waiting for a signature while Kyiv counts its nights

What you are holding back

Mr Hegseth.

A signature.

Yours.

It is missing.

It has been missing for weeks, for people who have never seen your office or your face.

They see the sky.

Missiles are waiting in an administrative pipeline, somewhere between your offices and a warehouse.

Missiles for the Patriots.

Missiles for the NASAMS.

They cost your budget nothing, since allies have already paid for them.

Your name is missing.

Nothing else.

Kyiv, meanwhile, counts.

One night.

Kyiv’s sirens do not wait for Pentagon procedures before they wail over the dormitories.

They sound.

Then another night.

Why we are writing to you

This letter does not come from an opponent of your president, nor from an enemy of your party.

It judges actions, one by one.

Yours, here, sticks.

A month of waiting for a gesture that takes one minute is a decision dressed up as a delay.

We want to see it change.

Before winter.

Before the next night.

Time is working against Kyiv, and nobody at the Pentagon is unaware of it.

The October 26 message

Volodymyr Zelensky wrote your name on October 26, in a public message addressed to the whole world.

On X, spelled out.

“We have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS.”

Nearly a month.

The Kyiv Post relayed the sentence, and Ukrinform recalled your title: Secretary of War.

The title is martial.

The pace, much less so.

Zelensky adds that he instructed his team to raise the issue with the American side “once again.”

Once again.

Two patient words.

They weigh more than a long speech.

They also speak of fatigue.

A wartime president who has to repeat the same request to his main ally loses precious weeks.

Weeks, plural.

What the Ukrainian president does not say

He insults nobody.

He makes no threat.

He states facts.

“Conversations with other countries are also ongoing,” he adds in the same message.

Read that sentence carefully.

It is an alternative.

Kyiv is also seeking PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles from other partners that hold stocks.

It is also a polite warning.

When an ally starts looking elsewhere for what Washington is slow to sign, Washington loses more than time.

It loses weight.

It loses its lead.

Ukraine’s partners will quickly understand that a European channel can route around an American office that moves too slowly.

Beijing watches these things.

Every American hesitation becomes an argument in Moscow’s propaganda and in Beijing’s calculations.

China takes note.

It remembers.

Money is not the problem

Let us be precise.

No gift requested.

These missiles have already been paid for by allies, Tim Zadorozhnyy recalls in The Kyiv Independent.

Already paid for.

By NATO.

By Europe.

The batch awaiting your approval is “significant,” a senior Ukrainian official told The Kyiv Independent.

So what is at stake is not the American taxpayer’s money, but Ukrainian time.

The mechanism is called PURL: allies finance the purchase of American weapons bound for Ukraine.

Your industry sells.

Your allies pay.

Ukraine waits.

The system works everywhere except at the step where America has to say yes.

A yes.

A yes that costs the Treasury nothing and even pays off for the American defense industry.

Only one step is missing, and it sits on your desk.

What the Washington Post saw

There is more.

Deliveries coming from third countries are reportedly blocked too, for lack of your signature, The Washington Post reported.

Third countries.

Not Washington.

According to the Post, cited by Anadolu, you have not formally refused, nor completed the required steps.

No refusal.

No approval.

A limbo.

An administrative limbo can cost as much as a refusal when Russian missiles fall every night.

The night does not negotiate.

You have kept approving some other aid, the paper adds, which makes this particular silence even stranger.

These missiles are paid for. They are missing your name.

The only answer to ballistic missiles

A technical fact.

It weighs heavily.

The Patriot is the only real means Ukraine has to intercept ballistic missiles.

The only one.

Not one among many.

A ballistic missile falls too fast for a gun, too high for an interceptor drone, too hard for a light shelter.

It takes a Patriot.

The other systems work against drones and cruise missiles, rarely against ballistic ones.

Or nothing at all.

A country with only one answer to a threat cannot afford to run out of it.

Russia understood that.

It fires ballistic missiles.

Recently, Russia fired 30 of them in a single night, Ellie Cook notes in Newsweek.

What a night without interceptors does

Thirty ballistic missiles.

One night.

Then empty batteries.

Someone then has to choose which cities to protect, for lack of enough munitions.

Choosing who.

An officer who keeps his last missiles for a power plant leaves another city without an umbrella.

Your signature eases that choice.

It does not remove it.

It makes it less cruel.

One more interceptor means one less city abandoned.

One more city protected.

The figure that accuses

A figure, now.

Only twenty-four.

That is how many US Patriot interceptors Ukraine received in 90 days, according to Zelensky, cited by the Kyiv Post.

The need, he says, runs to about 350 interceptors a month, again according to the Kyiv Post.

Three hundred fifty.

Every month.

Against 24 in three months.

Zelensky also says the United States delivers only 12 Patriot interceptors a month, The Kyiv Independent writes.

Twelve, really.

For a whole country.

For a whole winter.

Twelve interceptors a month do not even cover one single night like the night of thirty ballistic missiles.

The math is cruel.

Two thousand in forty-eight hours

Another figure.

Harder still.

On October 24, Zelensky compared 2,000 missiles in 48 hours for the Middle East and 24 in 90 days for Ukraine.

United24 published the comparison.

It hits hard.

Iran matters, yes.

So do your priorities.

But nobody can look at those two figures side by side without asking where the sense of proportion went.

Two thousand, over there.

Twenty-four here.

The proportion is missing.

A strong America can defend two theaters at once.

Let it prove it.

Two thousand in forty-eight hours. Twenty-four in ninety days.

Your stockpiles first

You have a position.

It can be defended.

Your line remains unchanged, you say, but American stockpiles come first.

You push Europe.

You are right.

Europe must do more.

Concerns about your stockpiles are real: repeated donations, the war with Iran, an industry that produces slowly.

A PAC-3 MSE costs several million dollars apiece, Newsweek recalls.

Several million.

Each, per unit.

That price justifies caution, and nobody is asking America to empty its arsenals.

Caution, yes.

Blockage, no.

What does not hold

But here it is.

These particular missiles are paid for.

Your budget argument does not apply to interceptors that allies have already settled.

It applies to your arsenals.

Not to anybody else’s.

Deliveries from third countries do not empty your warehouses; they are only waiting for your approval.

A fair argument.

Badly applied.

Asked by Newsweek, a senior Pentagon official repeated that policy had not changed.

A formula.

Nothing on this delay.

The Pentagon has figures, arguments and answers, and it would gain by giving them.

A department that dodges the question lets rumors, adversaries and analysts write history in its place.

Write it yourself.

What Yuriy Ihnat said

A Ukrainian official spoke up.

Yuriy Ihnat, head of Air Force communications.

He was speaking on an RBC-Ukraine podcast, quoted by the Kyiv Post.

His point is uncomfortable.

Ukraine could have had enough Patriots for several years, he says, without those fired in the Middle East.

Several years.

Not a few weeks.

He compares the methods.

They diverge.

His figures deserve a serious look in Washington, not a shrug.

One against eight

One target, one missile.

Only one.

In the Middle East, up to eight would be fired per target, even against cheap Shaheds, Ihnat says.

Eight missiles.

Against one cheap drone.

A multimillion-dollar Patriot against a low-cost Shahed is a trade that only infinite stockpiles allow.

Yours are not infinite.

You say so yourself.

So scarcity has to go where every missile truly counts.

In Kyiv, every missile counts.

One per target.

An army that saves its missiles this way deserves to be trusted with the ones others have paid for.

It has earned that.

On the ground.

Monday night, October 26

A concrete night, now.

The evening of October 26.

The day of the message.

Ballistic missiles hit Kyiv.

A university campus is struck.

One dead in a non-residential building, and nine injured, mostly students from the dormitory, United24 counts.

Students.

In their dormitory.

A paramedic and a medical technician were also injured near Lisova metro station.

The rescuers.

Hit too.

Rescuers wounded while answering a call is the mark of a strike that does not choose its victims.

Or that does choose them.

What the president wrote

Zelensky wrote that night.

“The exact number of casualties is not yet known. But tragically, there are victims.”

No grand speech.

A few words.

Mr Secretary, the ballistic missiles that hit that campus are exactly the threat your Patriots know how to stop.

Not some other threat.

That one, precisely.

The line between your office and that dormitory runs straight, with no detour.

A signature.

An interceptor.

A dormitory intact.

The rest is procedure, and procedure protects no sleeping student.

Not one.

Bad weather

Another blockage.

The early warning.

Ukraine’s ballistic warning system depends on American intelligence, The Kyiv Independent recalls.

It was disrupted.

The official American explanation?

“Bad weather conditions.”

The weather.

A short explanation.

Nobody disputes the weather, but a ballistic warning that weakens at the worst moment deserves a fuller explanation.

Under a sky at war.

American intelligence remains a pillar of Ukraine’s defense, and every outage is paid for in lost minutes.

Lost minutes.

What was restored

Let us be fair.

On October 21, ballistic warning intelligence sharing was restored, United24 writes.

That came after a strike on a 24-story building in Sviatoshynskyi, which left two dead.

Restored, then.

Thank you for that.

The warning makes people run.

A siren warns.

An interceptor protects.

You gave back the siren, and now you still have to give back the shield.

The two go together.

Restoring the warning without restoring the interceptors means telling people they are about to be hit.

Nothing more.

A population that is warned but unprotected runs to shelters hoping the missile falls somewhere else.

A dozen batteries

It has to be said too.

America has given a lot.

Before Trump returned in 2025, the United States had already sent a dozen NASAMS batteries.

A dozen.

That is enormous.

The systems were developed by Raytheon and Norway’s Kongsberg.

Nobody in Kyiv forgets it.

Nobody here does either.

The gratitude is sincere.

It cannot be bought.

It is earned.

It can also wear thin, if delays pile up while Ukrainian cities take the blows.

Do not wear it thin.

Slow progress

Zelensky himself speaks of progress.

Slow, but real.

There is progress, but the process is moving very slowly, he told TSN Tyzhden, according to Ukrinform.

Slow, yes.

The word is polite.

“Every support package is an opportunity to protect people’s lives,” he adds, quoted by Anadolu.

An opportunity.

This one has waited a month.

Opportunities that wait too long end up turning into reproaches, then into regrets.

Let us avoid regrets.

A signature today is worth more than an embarrassed explanation before Congress in six months.

Congress is watching.

Lawmakers may ask the question, and they would be right to ask it.

So sign.

Sharing the roles

Trump wanted burden sharing.

He got it.

Europe pays more for Ukraine, through PURL and other mechanisms.

A Trump victory.

A real one.

Kyiv is also asking Europeans for about 300 interceptors for the winter, the Kyiv Post reports.

A winter package.

Greece is resisting.

Every European capital has its own constraints, but none of them is blocking missiles already paid for by others.

Europe is not perfect.

It moves forward anyway.

Trump obtained a real financial effort for Ukraine from Europe, and he deserves credit for it.

Do not waste the victory

Here is the paradox.

Trump convinced them.

Europe paid.

And the last lock, the one that was supposed to be the simplest, is now American.

Your delay turns a diplomatic victory for your president into an argument for those who doubt Washington.

Not that gift.

They are waiting for it.

In Moscow.

In Beijing.

In some European capitals too.

Those who said Washington would drop Kyiv only need one more month to be proven right.

Do not prove them right.

The best answer to those skeptics is still a delivery, not one more statement.

The next meeting

The next meeting is known.

Ramstein, in November.

Ukraine’s group of allies will gather there, the Kyiv Post recalls.

November comes fast.

So does winter.

Arriving at Ramstein with the signature already done would mean arriving as an ally who keeps his word.

Otherwise, late.

The difference will show.

It will be read.

A signature before Ramstein would give Washington the lead role in a room full of allies.

In every capital.

Allies count signatures, and adversaries count delays.

Both keep records.

Ballistic season

You know the Ukrainian winter.

Power plants are targeted.

Late Sunday, Russian strikes damaged an energy site in the Khmelnytskyi region, Newsweek writes.

An energy site.

Before the cold.

Every Patriot missing in January will be a power plant that falls, and a city that freezes.

Moscow knows it.

It is preparing the season.

Prepare it too.

Air defense is built weeks before the strikes, never during them.

The weeks are slipping away.

Signed off in November, these missiles could be in their batteries before the deep cold. In January, too late.

What we are asking of you

Nothing extraordinary.

No new money.

No new weapons.

A signature on missiles already paid for, for a country that fires a single missile per target.

That is all.

Your president promised peace through strength, and strength starts with interceptors delivered.

Peace through strength.

The phrase belongs to you.

Apply it to Kyiv, and Kyiv will repeat it at every summit as a thank-you.

Kyiv knows how to say thanks.

It has shown it for every battery received, and it will show it for these missiles.

A line in a ledger

A ledger exists.

The decisions of a Secretary of War do not vanish with the press releases; they stay dated.

History will look for the date.

The day you signed.

Or did not.

That date will say whether Washington protected a Kyiv dormitory or left it waiting.

A month, already.

A dormitory, already.

It is not too late for that date to be the date of a signature, and not the date of a regret.

Not yet.

One minute to sign. One winter to regret.

Mr Hegseth, your interceptors are waiting for a signature while Kyiv counts its nights.

How many more nights before your name finally joins these missiles that are already paid for?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

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