Donald Trump has indicated he will consider providing more of the Patriot missiles that Ukraine needs to defend against mounting Russian strikes, adding that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “really has to end that war”. The US president’s remarks came after a 50-minute meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Nato summit in The Hague. Both leaders described it as a positive step in a conflict that Trump described as “more difficult than other wars”. Trump told a press conference the Patriots were “very hard to get” but that “we are going to see if we can make some of them available”.
The US president also left open the possibility of providing more military aid to Kyiv. Asked if Washington would contribute more funding to Ukraine’s defence this year, Trump said: “As far as money going, we’ll see what happens.” Zelenskyy said before Wednesday’s meeting that Ukraine was willing to buy more Patriots if the US was unwilling to donate them. He called the closed-door talks with Trump “long and substantive”, while the US president said the meeting “couldn’t have been nicer”.
The whole of Nato, including the US, is “totally committed” to keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russia’s invasion, the alliance’s secretary general said. Mark Rutte told Reuters that nobody in Nato was naive about Russia and all alliance members “have more or less the same assessment” of Moscow. “The whole of Nato, including the United States, is totally committed to keep Ukraine in the fight, to make sure that if there is a peace deal, that peace deal – or the ceasefire – will be lasting, will be durable,” Rutte told the news agency at the end of the Nato summit. He also said the clear direction of travel was that Europeans would be responsible for more of Ukraine’s military aid but that the US would still be “very much involved with intelligence-sharing, with also practical military support” including potentially air defence systems. “I think there will still be a huge, big American involvement.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said close ties between Europe and the US under Donald Trump were key to ensuring Kyiv defeated the Russian invasion, as he urged a trial for Putin. The Ukrainian leader signed an accord with the Council of Europe to set up a special tribunal to try top officials over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as he made his first visit since the start of the conflict to the France-based rights body. After the meeting with Trump earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskyy also made an impassioned call for close ties between Europe and the US president. “We need a strong connection with him [Trump],” Zelenskyy told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “We need unity between Europe and the United States and we will prevail,” he said, adding: “We need unity in Europe first of all.”
