Donald Trump has indicated he will consider providing more of the Patriot missiles that Ukraine needs to defend against mounting Russian strikes, adding that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “really has to end that war”. The US president’s remarks came after a 50-minute meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Nato summit in The Hague. Both leaders described it as a positive step in a conflict that Trump described as “more difficult than other wars”. Trump told a press conference the Patriots were “very hard to get” but that “we are going to see if we can make some of them available”.
The US president also left open the possibility of providing more military aid to Kyiv. Asked if Washington would contribute more funding to Ukraine’s defence this year, Trump said: “As far as money going, we’ll see what happens.” Zelenskyy said before Wednesday’s meeting that Ukraine was willing to buy more Patriots if the US was unwilling to donate them. He called the closed-door talks with Trump “long and substantive”, while the US president said the meeting “couldn’t have been nicer”.