Donald Trump criticised Vladimir Putin's 'meaningless' gestures towards peace and resumed sending munitions to Ukraine. Photo / Getty Images
United States President Donald Trump yesterday unleashed weeks of frustration with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over what he described as “meaningless” gestures toward peace, a day after Trump said the US would resume sending munitions to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s multi-year invasion.
The remarks from Trump were his harshest toward Putin since he was first elected president in 2016 and came as an abrupt change in public posture towards the Russian leader after months of failing to forge peace in a conflict that he once boasted he could resolve in a day.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
The President’s disenchantment with his Russian counterpart, along with more positive recent interactions he has had with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, appeared to have driven his decision to resume sending some air defence interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles to Ukraine after their delivery had been halted last month.
At the time, Administration officials said that the pause was necessary to assess whether the Pentagon’s weapons stockpiles were dwindling too low. Officials have not said who directed the pause.
It is unclear how quickly the initial tranche of paused weapons, which was held up in Poland, will arrive in Ukraine.
But the decision to release the munitions was cheered in Ukraine, which suffered a major Russian air attack on Kyiv and other cities late last week, shortly after a phone call between Trump and Putin.
On Tuesday NZT, Trump told reporters: “They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard. Now they’re getting hit very hard.
“We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess.”
His comments marked a notable turnabout in his approach to the conflict – at least for now.
Trump has long praised Putin as a tough-minded leader and has been scornful of Zelenskyy. Earlier this year, he scolded the Ukrainian President in a remarkable Oval Office encounter, calling him insufficiently grateful for American support.
Trump had also repeatedly expressed scepticism about providing military assistance to Ukraine and faulted the Biden Administration for its extensive efforts to bolster Ukraine against Russia.
His posture appealed to Trump’s interventionist-sceptic base of supporters and even some in the broader public who did not think President Joe Biden had clearly articulated why preventing a further Russian incursion into Europe was in the US interest.
Once Trump returned to the White House, his Administration effectively muscled Zelenskyy into agreeing to a joint fund with the US involving Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, without promising an explicit security guarantee.
But by appearing willing to leave Ukraine without strong defences, Trump was left with diminished leverage in pushing Putin towards the negotiating table.
Trump has been growing steadily frustrated with Putin in recent weeks, with advisers saying he believes he is being strung along.
At the end of May, Trump indicated to reporters that he might impose new sanctions on Russia, only to turn away from that, seeming to cling to a belief that there was still a deal to be made.
The President has also grown tired of watching television coverage of Russia increasing its aggression, according to one person close to him, specifically citing images he sees of war-torn Ukraine.
At the same time, Zelenskyy appears to have made headway in multiple conversations with Trump, including one at The Hague, Netherlands, where leaders of Nato member nations gathered last month.
Before that meeting, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte heaped praise on Trump for helping push other countries to increase their defence spending.
His comments appeared to help set a tone for a far less confrontational encounter between the two presidents than they had had in Washington.
After meeting with Zelenskyy at The Hague, Trump sounded somewhat open to giving Ukraine more munitions, although it was unclear whether he meant through a sale or a donation.
On July 3, Trump had a call with Putin that he complained about bitterly to reporters afterward. Their conversation did not lead to “progress”, he told reporters.
“I’m not happy with President Putin at all,” he said on Tuesday.
As Trump’s disillusionment with the Russian leader was building, Pentagon officials were growing increasingly concerned about the potential depletion of the American stockpile of weapons, especially after Israel attacked Iran.
Officials in Washington were worried that American bases in the region could be targeted, especially if the US joined Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear sites. That would require more arms to defend US troops.
The Pentagon also rushed additional Patriot anti-missile batteries from South Korea to the Gulf region as military planners projected how many Patriot interceptors and other munitions US forces might need in a protracted conflict.
Trump had asked the military for an inventory of available munitions around the time of the US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Senior Defence Department leaders then decided last month to pause delivery of some air defence interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles to Ukraine, citing concerns that the US weapons stocks were running low.
But the pause on sending some munitions to Ukraine was incidental, and not the purpose of the review, according to the two people.
It was still unclear precisely who at the Pentagon and at the White House had been involved in the decision. Yesterday, Trump declined to answer questions about it.
With Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth seated next to him, Trump was asked several times who directed the pause. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Over the past two years, the Pentagon has sent more than US$66 billion ($110b) in weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine.
The weaponry comes from two main sources, both initiated during the Biden Administration and, for a time, widely supported by Republicans in Congress.
Some munitions and weapons are drawn from existing Pentagon stockpiles, with Congress reimbursing the Defence Department to quickly replenish those inventories, often with updated weapons and munitions.
The second stream comes from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in which the Pentagon finances the acquisition of weapons for Ukraine directly from American military contractors. The firms deliver the munitions to Ukraine over a period of months or years.
Most of the weapons sent from Pentagon stockpiles have been delivered, with the last slated to be sent later this summer. The contracted munitions are expected to continue to flow into next year.
Until June, Pentagon and military officials believed they could continue to send Ukraine regularly scheduled allotments of weapons, including Patriot interceptors, and still meet their wartime requirements.
The interceptors were especially prized because they are one of the few weapons Ukraine can use to knock down Russia’s most advanced missiles.
They have been critical weapons in Ukraine’s struggling efforts to hold off increasingly intense attacks from Russia, at a particularly perilous moment in the three years and four months since Russia invaded.
The initial tranche of paused weapons – a mix from Pentagon inventories and new factory deliveries – was held up in Poland last month just before it was to be loaded onto trucks and sent into Ukraine, two military officials said. That shipment was still on hold as of yesterday, the officials added.
That shipment was relatively small, to include 30 Patriot interceptors, 142 Hellfire missiles for US-made Ukrainian F-16 fighters and nearly 8500 155mm artillery shells (equivalent to about what Ukraine fires in two days along its front lines).
But as one former Ukrainian official put it, in the current security environment, “even 30 Patriot missiles is a big deal”. And Ukrainian officials feared subsequent weapons shipments would be paused or eventually cancelled.
The Trump Administration has not requested any further military aid for Ukraine.
The pause was first reported by Politico, and the White House confirmed publicly that it had gone into place before the Pentagon did.
But the decision caught other parts of the Government, including the State Department and Congress, by surprise, and drew immediate criticism from supporters of Ukraine.
“The Pentagon is significantly weakening Ukraine’s defence against aerial attacks even as Russia pounds Ukrainian cities night after night, with numerous civilians dead and wounded,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.
By yesterday, Shaheen and other backers of military aid to Ukraine were applauding the Administration’s about-face.
“I am pleased that President Trump appears to have reversed course on the dangerous and shortsighted decision,” Shaheen said in a statement.
“It is absolutely vital that security assistance continues to flow to force Putin to the negotiating table.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Maggie Haberman and Eric Schmitt
Photographs by: Getty Images, Doug Mills
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