President Donald Trump pledged on Monday evening to send more weapons to aid Ukraine’s war against Russia, marking a reversal of the Pentagon’s decision last week to pause some military aid to Kyiv.
“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. 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, your defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard,” the president told reporters at the White House during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The president’s latest positioning on the conflict could signal he’s putting more pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept negotiations for a peace deal after Moscow previously rejected ceasefire proposals mediated by the United States that were endorsed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This whole thing that’s happening with Russia and Ukraine, it’s a horrible to horrible thing. And I’m not happy with President Putin at all. But this is something that would have never happened if I were president. This was a war that was never going to happen,” Trump said.
When pressed on criticism that his stance on the Ukraine conflict could spark World War III, Trump said he remained focused on ending the war “because I have an ability to do so.”
“I’m stopping wars, and I hate to see people killed, like for example, Ukraine and Russia,” he said. “These are all Russians and all Ukrainians and but it’s 5,000 maybe, 7,000 last week, 7,500 last week, mostly soldiers, but people in towns and cities that are getting hit. … And if I can stop that, you know, they had parents, and they have sisters and brothers, and getting married, and who knows, they’re just people, but they’re souls. … I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped. I’m not happy about it either.”
Trump’s promise to surge support to Ukraine comes after the Defense Department recently stopped a shipment of air defense missiles to Ukraine after the Pentagon said weapons stockpiles had fallen too low.
Following the partial aid freeze, Russia launched one of its largest-ever air strikes against Ukraine, launching 550 drones and missiles against mainly Kyiv on Friday, including seven ballistic missiles.
In addition to commenting on the Ukraine-Russia conflict Monday evening, Trump told reporters that peace talks with Iran are back on the table, with White House officials saying meetings with the regime could take place within the next week.
“We have scheduled Iran talks,” the president revealed. “They want to talk. … They want to work something out. … They’re very different now than they were two weeks ago.”
Trump’s statement comes after he floated holding peace talks with the regime in June but pulled back from negotiations after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released an inflammatory, anti-U.S. statement.
The U.S. intervened last month in the conflict between Iran and Israel, which sparked over concerns about the regime’s nuclear capabilities. The Pentagon’s secretive June mission targeted three Iranian nuclear facilities, a move the Defense Department said last week set back the regime’s nuclear program by up to two years.
Supporters of the president have said he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to mediate an end to the Middle Eastern conflict, as well as his work brokering peace deals ending decades of “violent bloodshed and death” between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and decadeslong conflicts between India and Pakistan.
During his remarks alongside Trump at the White House on Monday, Netanyahu revealed he had also nominated the president for the Nobel Peace Prize.
NETANYAHU NOMINATES TRUMP FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN WHITE HOUSE MEETING
“The president has already realized great opportunities,” Netanyahu said ahead of a dinner with Trump. “He forged the Abraham Accords; he’s forging peace as we speak in one country and one region after the other. So, I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize committee. It’s nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved, and you should get it.”
In addition to his work to secure a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia and Iran and the U.S., Trump is attempting to broker a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. The president said on Monday he doesn’t see any “holdup” in peace talks that White House envoy Steve Witkoff is set to spearhead in Doha this week between Hamas and Netanyahu, saying he “thinks things are going along very well.”