US President Donald Trump indicated yesterday he will consider providing more of the Patriot missiles that Ukraine needs to defend against mounting Russian strikes, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin “really has to end that war”.
His remarks came after a 50-minute meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the 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”.
During a press conference in which he celebrated his own diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, Trump said the Patriots were “very hard to get” but that “we are going to see if we can make some of them available”.
Zelenskiy mentioned air-defence systems but it was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to more missiles or complete batteries.
Trump also left open the possibility of providing more military aid to Kyiv, which has suffered grinding Russian advances on the battlefield in recent months.
He had previously shown no sign of resuming the donations of weaponry to Ukraine that his predecessor Joe Biden had instituted after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Asked directly whether the US would contribute more funding to Ukraine’s defence this year, Trump said: “As far as money going, we’ll see what happens.”
The US-made Patriot batteries are critical to shooting down the Russian ballistic missiles that have increasingly rained on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks.
Dozens of people have been killed over the past week on the capital Kyiv and the southeastern regional capital of Dnipro.
Zelenskiy said before yesterday’s meeting that Ukraine was willing to buy more Patriots if the US was unwilling to donate them. He said the talks with Trump were “long and substantive”.
Trump added that he would soon speak once more with Putin, adding: “Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war.”
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