𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

US president Donald Trump has said billions of dollars of US weapons would go to Ukraine, including more than a dozen Patriot air defence missiles.

“We’re going to make top-of-the-line weapons, and they’ll be sent to Nato,” Mr Trump said, adding that Washington’s Nato allies would pay for them.

The weapons would include Patriot air defence missiles Ukraine has urgently sought, he said.

“It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Mr Trump said. “We’re going to have some come very soon, within days.”

“We have one country that has 17 Patriots getting ready to be shipped… we’re going to work a deal where the 17 will go or a big portion of the 17 will go to the war site,” he said.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who was sitting alongside Mr Trump in the Oval Office, said Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada all wanted to be a part of rearming Ukraine.

Artyom Nikolayev, an analyst from financial information firm Invest Era, said the US president Donald Trump did not go as far as Russian markets had feared.

“Trump performed below market expectations. He gave 50 days during which the Russian leadership can come up with something and extend the negotiation track. Moreover, Trump likes to postpone and extend such deadlines,” he said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has asked first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko on Monday to lead a new government, setting the stage for a political reshuffle as Ukraine’s war with Russia raged on.

Mr Zelensky also proposed that Ukraine’s current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, take over as defence minister, describing him as holding the right qualifications for a very important job.

“We… discussed concrete measures to boost Ukraine’s economic potential, expand support programs for Ukrainians, and scale up our domestic weapons production,” Mr Zelensky wrote on X.

“In pursuit of this goal, we are initiating a transformation of the executive branch in Ukraine,” he said, adding that he had proposed that Ms Svyrydenko lead the government and “significantly renew its work”.

Ms Svyrydenko, 39, is an economist and has served as first deputy prime minister since 2021. She played a key role in recent negotiations for a minerals deal with the United States.

The US could impose crippling secondary sanctions on Russia if the three-year-old war it has been waging against Ukraine is not brought to an end by 2 September, president Donald Trump has said.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday alongside Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, Mr Trump said he’s “very unhappy” with Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, and pledged to impose what he described as “very severe tariffs” on Moscow “if we don’t have a deal in 50 days.”

“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. So based on that, we’re going to be doing secondary tariffs. If we don’t have a deal in 50 days, it’s very simple, and they’ll be at 100 percent, and that’s the way it is. That can be more simple. It’s just the way it is. I hope we don’t have to do it,” he said.

Read Andrew Feinberg’s full report here: