Donald Trump said he is considering sending more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, as he renewed calls on Russian leader Vladimir Putin to end the war.
The president added that he isn’t ruling out a new defense assistance package, when he spoke to reporters at the Nato summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
Trump, who has surrounded himself with isolationist-minded advisers who’ve publicly opposed continued support for Kyiv, responded, “We’ll see what happens” when asked whether the U.S. would contribute anything on top of the $8 billion pledged by NATO allies as part of the 32-member bloc’s continued support for Ukraine’s war effort.
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Speaking at a press conference on the heels of a closed-door sit-down with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump said there has been “a lot of spirit” in Ukraine’s fight against the invasion Putin ordered in February 2022.
Trump also appeared to shift blame for the continuation and escalation of the war to Putin, marking a dramatic reversal from how he characterized the situation during a contentious Oval Office meeting with Zelensky earlier this year.
“Vladimir Putin really has to end that war,” the president said. “People are dying at levels that people haven’t seen before for a long time.”
He recounted to reporters how he’d rebuked Putin during a recent phone call after the Russian leader offered to mediate an end to hostilities between Israel and Iran, stressing he would rather he brought an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
He later added that Putin has been “more difficult” than Zelensky, with whom Trump has had a contentious relationship dating back to his first term, when a phone call with the Ukrainian leader launched a scandal that led to the first of his two impeachment trials in the Senate.
Trump’s relationship with Putin has long been far friendlier, but even that has appeared to sour in recent months as the Russian dictator has continued to pound civilian targets in Ukraine with drones and missiles, killing thousands and complicating efforts by Trump to cajole both sides to the negotiating table.
In April, he became so irate over Putin’s attacks on civilians that he took to Truth Social to exhort the Russian leader to halt the attacks and get to the negotiating table, writing: “Vladimir, STOP! 5,000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”
Since then, he has floated the possibility of imposing harsh new sanctions on Moscow if Putin refuses to cooperate in the U.S.-led efforts to bring about a settlement in the three-year-old conflict.
The president’s changed view of the war and Putin’s culpability also became evident when he had an emotional exchange with a reporter for the BBC’s Ukrainian service, who asked whether the U.S. was prepared to sell more Patriot anti-air missiles to Ukraine.
Last year, the Biden administration announced they would prioritize deliveries of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine on account of Russia’s accelerated pace of aerial attacks against civilians and infrastructure, but Kyiv has had to expand their use of the missiles and has been running low on them.
Trump asked the reporter if she was currently living in Ukraine, at which point she replied that she was based in Warsaw with her children while her husband has remained in Ukraine.
The president responded: “That’s rough stuff.” He asked the journalist again to confirm that she was living outside of Ukraine and working as a reporter, replying “good” when she answered in the affirmative.
“Let me just tell you, they [Ukraine] do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them, the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available,” he said.
Trump added that such weapons were “very hard to get” and “very effective”, while admitting that the U.S. had been prioritizing supplies for Israel amid that country’s ongoing wars.
“They do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know,” he said before praising her “very good question” and telling her to “say hello” to her husband for him.
Trump’s apparent openness to sending more American aid to Ukraine comes as NATO’s 32 member nations pledged to “reaffirm” what they described as “enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine,” calling Ukrainian security efforts a contribution to NATO’s own security.
The alliance also pledged to include “direct contributions to Ukraine defense” as part of efforts to have each country meet a threshold of spending five percent of gross domestic product on defense.
