Washington: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian President Vladimir Putin "talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening."
Trump did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
The US president has grown increasingly disenchanted with Putin because the Russian leader has resisted Trump’s attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked for more defensive capabilities to fend off a daily barrage of missile and drone attacks from Russia.
“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people. 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,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington.
“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,” Trump said.
Trump is set to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this week to discuss his plan to sell NATO allies US weaponry that they can then pass on to Ukraine.
Rutte will be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and plans to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as well as members of Congress.
“I’m gonna have a meeting with the secretary general who’s coming in tomorrow,” Trump told reporters as he arrived in Washington on Sunday night. “But we basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated (weapons) and they’re gonna pay us 100 percent for them.”
