Donald Trump has said he will send Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine and that they are “desperately” needed to defend the country because Russian president Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening”. The US president did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Kyiv but said the European Union would reimburse the US for their cost. “They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. The moves come amid a souring of Trump’s relations with Putin and just two weeks after Washington said it would pause some arms deliveries to Kyiv.
US senators touted a bipartisan bill that would arm Trump with “sledgehammer” sanctions to use against Russia, ahead of the latest visit to Ukraine by US special envoy Keith Kellogg. Trump said he would make a “major statement … on Russia” on Monday. Republican senator Lindsey Graham – a top ally of Trump – said on Sunday he had majority backing in the Senate for his bill, which was gaining momentum as US-led peace efforts in Ukraine struggled. The bill would allow Trump “to go after Putin’s economy and all those countries who prop up the Putin war machine”, he told broadcaster CBS. Trump has indicated he would be open to the sanctions bill after repeatedly saying he is “disappointed” with Putin over Moscow’s deadly missile barrages against Ukraine.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte is set to meet Trump this week on the heels of the US president announcing plans to sell Nato allies weaponry that it can then pass on to Ukraine. Nato said Rutte would be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and would meet with Trump, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth as well as Congress. French defense minister Sebastien Lecornu, meanwhile, said in an interview published on Sunday in La Tribune Dimanche that European officials had been making the case to the Trump administration to bolster air defence capabilities with any coming packages. He said France was in a “capacity hole” and would have to wait until next year before being able to provide Ukraine new ground-to-air missiles.
Ukraine’s SBU security service has announced it tracked down and killed Russian agents they said had assassinated one of their members. A two-strong team – a man and a woman – had killed Col Ivan Voronich in Kyiv on Thursday, it said. “A special operation was conducted this morning, during which members of the Russian FSB agent group put up resistance and they were eliminated,” the SBU statement on Sunday said. It did not specify how many people had been killed but the SBU posted a video in which two bodies were visible. The team that killed Voronich had spent time getting to know his daily schedule and routes, the SBU said.
The UN nuclear watchdog said it had heard hundreds of rounds of small arms fire late on Saturday at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Sunday that the large number of shots – repeatedly fired for about an hour from 10pm local time – was unusual and that it was seeking further information.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Sunday to discuss Ukraine as well as relations with the US. Lavrov arrived in China after a visit to North Korea, where he received assurances of support in its conflict with Ukraine. Lavrov and Wang Yi’s talks included “the outlook for settling the Ukrainian crisis”, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
