President Donald Trump said he’d ship more weapons to Ukraine, marking an apparent reversal after the Pentagon halted flows of some air-defense missiles and artillery shells to the country.
“We’re going to send some more weapons,” Trump told reporters at the start of a dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday evening. “We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.”
Trump didn’t specify what the US would provide except to say the armaments would be “defense weapons primarily.”
The president’s comments will offer a measure of relief to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who spoke with Trump on Friday in an effort to get the halt lifted. Trump has also tried to broker peace in talks with Moscow, which have so far failed to end the war.
Russia has been pounding Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with record numbers of drones and missiles. Trump lamented the thousands of people who have been killed and said he wasn’t happy with President Vladimir Putin for keeping up attacks.
“I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped,” Trump said. “I’m not happy about it.”
The Pentagon said last week the pause was necessary while the US reviews its stockpiles and weighs the need to save weapons for other threats. While stockpile numbers are classified, the weapons Ukraine needs most aren’t urgently required elsewhere and there was no immediate need to deny the country weapons that were already on their way, they said.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Monday that Trump had told Zelenskiy in the Friday phone call he’d ordered a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles after the US attack on Iran last month but didn’t order the halt. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the review when he took office.
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