Exclusive | Ukrainian delegation headed to Washington to finalize drone deal with Trump administration

WASHINGTON — Ukrainian defense and national security officials are on their way to Washington to hammer out details of a proposed drone deal with the Trump administration, The Post has learned.

Representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and its National Security and Defense Council will be working with their American counterparts Tuesday through Friday as Washington and Kyiv aim to solidify a defense agreement that would bind the countries closer together.

“Following the results of the negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, a Ukraine delegation will arrive to Washington from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 for technical consultations on the drone deal,” said new Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishyna.

The meetings come as Ukraine aims to build upon a successful meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of last week’s United Nations General Assembly.

“I think now after today’s meeting, we need to not lose the time,” Zelensky’s top adviser Andriy Yermak told The Post following the Sept. 23 sitdown.

While details of the potential drone deal are scarce, Zelensky told reporters in New York last week that the US and Ukraine had technical groups working on an agreement that “concerns drones that the United States will purchase directly from Ukraine.”

Ukraine has become a leader in drone technology and advancement, creating an unmanned aircraft industry from scratch as it grappled with a full-scale Russian invasion beginning in February 2022.

Currently, hundreds of producers are making millions of drones and counter-drone systems, which are then put to work fighting off Russian attacks and updated daily for effectiveness.

The deal could be transformative for America’s military and national security, with officials and drone experts on both sides of the Atlantic warning that US technology lags far behind China and Russia.

In the long run, Ukraine’s burgeoning drone industry could lead American companies to divest from their long-standing reliance on Beijing for drones, industry leaders have told The Post.

Domestic drone production has traditionally focused on high-value targets rather than high-volume technology that has been a feature of modern warfare.

In July, Zelensky revealed in an exclusive interview with The Post that he and Trump had been discussing a drone “mega deal” that would see the US and Ukraine prop up each other’s aerial technology — with Kyiv offering to share everything it’s learned about modern warfare in its three-year conflict with Russia.

“The people of America need this technology, and you need to have it in your arsenal,” Zelensky said at the time. “I think this is really a mega-deal, a win-win, as they say.”

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment.