President Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Washington, D.C. Monday, announcing a new deal in which the U.S. will sell European partners U.S. weapons, allowing a greater supply of arms to Ukraine.
According to the leaders, the deal totals billions of dollars' worth of military equipment, including Patriot munitions and other missiles and ammunition.
Speaking in the Oval Office with President Trump, Rutte said Germany, Finland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Denmark would be among the nations purchasing U.S. munitions.
It comes after President Trump announced separately that the U.S. will be giving Patriot missiles to Ukraine to help in its war against Russia.
"This is obviously an important moment and a pivot point for this war," U.S. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker told Scripps News in an interview on Monday. "Obviously, President Trump has wanted peace since he came to office. He has tried to get Vladimir Putin to come to the table and negotiate an enduring peace. that has failed. And I think he's decided as he announced today that Ukraine is entitled to defend themselves. America makes the best weapons in the world and we're going to sell our European NATO allies, together with Canada, American armaments, and they'll supply that to Ukraine."
The president also announced on Monday the U.S. would place tariffs and other sanctions on Russia if Russia's President Vladimir Putin didn't agree to a peace deal with Ukraine within the next 50 days.
The president has been critical of Putin in recent days, a quick departure from the manner in which he'd talk about his Russian counterpart earlier this year.
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"I am very disappointed with [Russian] President Putin and I thought that he was somebody that meant what he said," President Trump told reporters on Sunday. "He'll talk so beautifully and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that."
President Trump held a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier on Monday, in which they discussed the efforts to bolster Ukraine's defenses.
Zelenskyy said President Trump “agreed to catch up more often by phone and coordinate our steps in the future.”
The conflict in Eastern Europe has intensified in recent weeks. The United Nations reports that June saw the worst casualties in Ukraine in nearly three years.
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Meanwhile on Capitol Hill this week, lawmakers continue to wait and see if President Trump will endorse a bipartisan plan to sanction Russia. One idea includes using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine buy additional military equipment.
Lawmakers on Monday called the deadline President Trump imposed "a real executive hammer to drive the parties to the negotiating table. The goal is not more tariffs and sanctions – the goal is to entice Putin to come to the peace table.”
Another idea on Capitol Hill is to penalize countries that are buying Russian energy. However, it's a slippery slope because it could potentially mean harming some U.S. allies that rely on that energy.
