Trump says US will send Patriot missiles to Ukraine

Getty Images via AFP

US President Donald Trump said he will send Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian leader 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 US 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 Zelenskyy 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."

He plans to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to discuss Ukraine and other issues this week.

More from International News

  • US military targets IS in Syria strikes

    The US military said on Saturday it carried out multiple strikes in Syria targeting ISIS as part of an operation that Washington launched in December after an attack on American personnel.

  • Israeli fire kills three people in Gaza, tension rises

    Israeli fire killed at least three Palestinians in two separate incidents across Gaza, local health authorities said, as tension rises over continued violence.

  • Tens of thousands protest in Minneapolis over fatal ICE shooting

    Tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis on Saturday to decry the fatal shooting of a woman by a US immigration agent, part of more than 1,000 rallies planned nationwide over the weekend against the federal government's deportation drive.

  • One dead in Australian bush fires

    At least one person has died in Australia's southeast where bushfires raging for days have razed buildings, cut power to thousands of homes and burned swathes of bushland, police said on Sunday.

Coming Up

  • Non Stop 92

    8:00pm - 10:00pm

  • Dubai 92 Chilled

    10:00pm - Midnight