President Donald Trump said the United States will be sending Ukraine’s armed forces additional Patriot air defense missiles and more “very sophisticated” military equipment, as he expressed frustration at Russian president Vladimir Putin’s conduct in his country’s three-year-old war against Ukraine.
“I am very disappointed with President Putin. I thought he was somebody that meant what he said, and he’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that,” the president told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday after returning from the FIFA Club World Cup final.
Trump did not rule out unveiling new sanctions when he meets with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House on Monday, as he noted that he plans to send more weapons to Ukraine.
“We will send them Patriots which they desperately need because Putin ... really surprised a lot of people,” Trump said. “It's little bit of a problem there, I don't like it,” Trump said.
Trump also said the European Union would be purchasing the American-made weapons that will be ultimately delivered to Ukraine for use against Russia. He did not specify the number of Patriots bound for Kyiv but he specifically mentioned the famed American-made system, which he said Ukraine needs “because they do need protection” as Russia continues to attack civilian targets on a near-nightly basis.
The president’s pledge to send more weapons to Kyiv came days after he issued a none-too-veiled threat of action against Russia after Moscow’s forces hit a Ukrainian maternity hospital on Friday, injuring nine people, and a fresh barrage of drones and missiles were launched on Ukraine over the weekend.
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s security agency announced that it had tracked down and killed Russian agents who assassinated a Ukrainian intelligence officer.
Trump told reporters before a trip to Texas to observe flood damage that they would “be seeing things happen” with regard to Russia, less than a day after he told NBC News that he’d be making a “major announcementt” on the status of the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine war this coming Monday.
Last week during a cabinet meeting, he praised Kyiv’s armed forces for their bravery as they’ve wielded their American-made equipment while battling back Russia’s invasion.
“I will say the Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made ... we gave them missiles, the latest and the greatest. They were able to shoot down a lot of things,” he said.
Trump’s hard line towards Putin and newfound zeal for arming Ukraine marks a head-spinning reversal for the American leader, who entered office for his second term as a strident critic of U.S. support for Ukraine and has long had a rocky relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dating back to a now-infamous July 2019 phone call between the two leaders that led to the first of his two impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate.
But his tone towards Ukraine and Russia has changed in recent weeks as U.S. efforts to broker a ceasefire in the three-year-old conflict have come to naught, a development he is understood to place at the feet of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
After Pentagon officials went behind his back to halt shipments of weapons to Ukraine for what was described as a review of American weapons stockpile levels, Trump intervened and ordered the deliveries to resume.
