President of the United States of America Donald Trump announced the sending of 17 Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. According to him, most of these systems will be on the battlefield. This statement was made during his briefing with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

"Ukraine will be able to get its hands on a truly huge amount of military equipment, both for air defense and missiles, ammunition, and so on, and so on, and so on," he said.

When asked whether Ukraine would receive Patriot batteries or specifically missiles for them, the American president answered as follows:

"Everything. It's a Patriot. It's a complete set with batteries."

According to Trump, some systems will arrive in Ukraine very soon.

"Within a few days, actually, because several countries that have Patriots are going to replace them, and we'll replace the Patriots with the ones they have," the US president said.

He also noted that he believed that an agreement with Russian leader Putin regarding the war in Ukraine was close, but people continue to die.

"There's going to be a period of time. Maybe he (Putin, – ed.) will start negotiating. I think we felt, I felt – I don't know about you, Mark (NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, – ed.), but I felt that we had an agreement. But we're still talking. I thought we should have made an agreement a long time ago. But it all goes on and on and on. People are dying every night," Trump stressed.

Trump's other statements about the war in Ukraine

If there is no agreement on a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine within 50 days, the United States will impose secondary tariffs against Russia and its partners. According to the American leader, they will amount to 100%.

He also announced that an agreement had been reached with the EU to supply weapons to Ukraine. Trump stressed that the costs would be covered by Europe.