The US will ship Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine in its fight against Russia because Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then bombs everybody in the evening,” President Trump said Sunday.
Although Trump did not get into specifics about how many missiles he would send, he reassured American citizens that the European Union would pick up the tab and reimburse the US for the associated costs.
Trump’s frustration with the Russian dictator has grown more and more recently as his efforts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia have been derailed and attempts at a ceasefire have gone nowhere.
“A lot of people are dying and it should end,” the president told reporters during a Cabinet meeting last week. “We get a lot of bulls–t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked for more defensive capabilities to fend off a daily barrage of missile and drone attacks from Russia.
The country has been the subject of four major Russian assaults this month alone. At least 13 Ukrainian civilians were killed Saturday when Russia unleashed hundreds of drones and missiles – including so-called “kamikaze drones,” Ukraine’s air force said.
The attacks struck western cities which until recently were considered safe from Russian reach. The Kremlin’ onslaught included 623 drones and 26 missiles, including 319 Iranian-made Shahed drones.
In response, Trump said he is going to ship the Patriots to aid in Ukraine’s defense.
“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.
The commander in chief plans on meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to discuss Ukraine along with other pressing issues this week.“We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump said.
