President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. will send Patriot air defense missile systems to Ukraine. “Putin really surprised a lot of people,” the president told reporters. “He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening. But there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it.”
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The missiles will be paid for by the Europeans, Trump implied. “We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100 percent for that, and that’s the way we want it.”
The announcement follows an about-face by the White House last week on a potential pause on U.S. aid to Ukraine. The Pentagon suspended on July 1 shipments of some munitions, including air defense missiles, to Ukraine over concerns about the state of American stockpiles. The president repudiated the pause in comments to the press last Monday, and shipments were resumed shortly thereafter.
Trump, who has unsuccessfully pushed for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine since his inauguration in January, has expressed his increasing frustration with Russia’s response to American diplomacy. “We get a lot of bulls*** thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” he said in a July 8 press conference. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
