WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Monday the US will send “billions of dollars” worth of weapons to Ukraine via Washington’s NATO allies — and threatened to impose “secondary tariffs” on Moscow’s business partners in 50 days if no peace is agreed to end the 40-month-old war.
The weapons will include “everything,” Trump said during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office — though the president did not immediately reveal specifics.
The White House also did not provide additional information on the specific weapons sent over to Europe.
When asked whether “Patriot missiles” — officially known as Guided Mulitple Launch Rocket Systems — or “Patriot batteries” would be sent to Ukraine, the president responded: “It is all of them. It is a full complement.”
“We will have some within days,” Trump continued. “A couple of countries that have Patriots will swap over, or replace the Patriots with the ones they have.”
“NATO may choose to have certain of them sent to other countries where we can get a little additional speed, where the country will release something, and it’ll be mostly in the form of a replacement,” he added.
Later Monday, ahead of a White House faith luncheon, the 79-year-old Trump reiterated that there will be “weapons of all kinds” sent across the Atlantic, with other members of the alliance paying for them by raising their defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade.
“We are going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” Trump said, with Rutte agreeing that European countries should be “stepping up” and paying for the American-made materiel.
“This is really big,” Rutte, 58, said of the announcement, lauding Trump’s leadership in supplying Kyiv with much-needed munitions.
“It will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defense, but also missiles, ammunition, etc., etc.,” the NATO secretary general and former Dutch prime minister added.
Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post’s signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here!
Though Trump used the phrase “secondary tariffs” during his meeting with Rutte, pledging that “they’ll be at 100%,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later clarified that the president meant to announce secondary sanctions on Russia’s trading partners.
Secondary sanctions are meant to punish individuals or entities who do business with a country. Should those sanctions take effect on Sept. 2, 50 days from Monday, they are meant to put more pressure on Moscow — which has already been hit with direct sanctions — by deterring further business and isolating Russia’s economy.
A White House official told The Post that “Russia will face severe sanctions and tariffs if they do not sign a cease-fire deal in 50 days,” without providing more details on the secondary sanctions or weapons.
Trump has been hesitant to impose heavy sanctions on Russia, but has grown more frustrated in recent months with a lack of willingness by Russian President Vladimir Putin to get to a peace deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I’m disappointed in President Putin, because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn’t seem to get there,” Trump told reporters.
“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, ‘Well, that was a nice phone call.’ And then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city. And I said, ‘Strange.’ And after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything,” he continued.
“My conversations with him are always very pleasant. They say, ‘Isn’t that good? Very lovely conversation.’ And then the missiles go off that night. I go home, I tell the first lady [Melania Trump], ‘I spoke with Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.’ She said, ‘Oh, really? Another city was just hit.’
“So, it’s like — look, he’s, I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy. He’s been proven over the years. He’s fooled a lot of people. He fooled [George W.] Bush. He fooled a lot of people, [Bill] Clinton, Bush, [Barack] Obama, [Joe] Biden, he didn’t fool me, but what I do say is that at a certain point, you know, ultimately, talk doesn’t talk. It’s got to be action. It’s got to be results.”
Zelensky revealed Monday afternoon on X that he and Trump had spoken by phone to discuss the US president’s announcement, with the Ukrainian calling it a “very good conversation.”
“We discussed the necessary means and solutions with the President to provide better protection for people from Russian attacks and to strengthen our positions,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
“We are ready to work as productively as possible to achieve peace.”
Additional reporting by Caitlin Doornbos in Kyiv.
