By Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -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 U.S. president has grown increasingly disenchanted with Putin because the Russian leader has resisted Trump’s attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Trump is expected to announce a new plan to arm Ukraine with offensive weapons in a sharp departure from his earlier stance, Axios reported on Sunday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters
request for comment. Reuters couldn’t immediately verify the report.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy 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% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump said.
He plans to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to discuss Ukraine and other issues this week.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Steve Holland and Kevin Lamarque; Editing by Kim Coghill, Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)
