United States President Donald Trump has confirmed the US will send Ukraine more weapons and has threatened to levy steep tariffs on Russia amid his growing frustration over Russia’s refusal to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
Speaking at the White House on Monday during a meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump said the US would be sending “billions” of dollars in military equipment, including Patriot air defence systems and other missiles. These weapons, said Trump, will be paid for by NATO members.
“In a nutshell, we’re going to make top-of-the-line weapons, and they’ll be sent to NATO,” said Trump.
He added that if Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to sign a peace deal with Ukraine, he will impose “very severe tariffs” in 50 days, including secondary tariffs of 100 percent.
Trump took office with a promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours, and Putin’s refusal to ink a peace agreement has increasingly frustrated the US president.
While Russia has agreed to brief pauses in fighting, it has refused to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, saying that the proposal would give Kyiv a chance to remobilise its troops and rearm.
That has strained the close relationship between Putin and Trump, who last week accused the Russian leader of throwing a lot of “b******” at the US.
Rutte commended Trump’s announcement, saying: “It will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defence, but also missiles, ammunition, etc.
“If I was Vladimir Putin today, and hear you speaking about what you were planning to do in 50 days, and this announcement, I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously than I was doing at the moment.”
Trump said he would be pulling Patriot air defence systems from around the world to be sold to NATO countries and distributed by the defence bloc, but he did not say whether the US would also be sending long-range rockets and other offensive weapons.
During the press conference, Trump repeatedly expressed his frustration with Putin.
“My conversations with him are always very pleasant … I go home, I tell the first lady: ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation’. She said: ‘Oh, really, another city was just hit’.”
Trump said that, unlike his predecessors, he wasn’t “fooled” by Putin but that ultimately, talk doesn’t talk. It’s got to be action … He knows the deal. He knows what a fair deal is.”
Melinda Haring, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said Trump’s about-face came after months of Putin’s continued onslaught.
“Trump gave Putin six months. He stuck his neck out, and he said that he was going to make peace. And he also felt like Putin was stringing him along. In addition to those reasons, there were people that were close to the president showing him pictures of Ukraine, of the cities and children that are being harmed every single night,” she said.
In Kyiv, Ukrainians are cautiously viewing the announcement as a strong message of support, despite the many unknown details.
“If Patriot batteries really do make their way to Ukraine, then that is going to go a long way to protecting the skies over this country, as it tries to endure almost nightly massive barrages of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands.
The Kremlin responded by noting that the West had long provided weapons and equipment to Ukraine and said dialogue remained important to Moscow.
But within Russian society, the US-NATO announcement was greeted with disappointment, said Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova.
“There were hopes when Donald Trump came into power that the conflict would end. People saw that Trump had some steps to bring peace to Ukraine to help finish this conflict, but now he’s kind of lost his patience,” she said. “Pro-war sources say: ‘You see, we told you that Russia didn’t have to trust Donald Trump because he was not Russia’s friend.’”
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