Trump Didn’t Turn His Back on Putin-He Sold Weapons to Kyiv Using NATO’s Wallet
According to the English section of webangah News Agency, citing mehr News Agency, The Independent reported that Donald Trump, the US president, has not abandoned vladimir Putin. Instead, through an remarkable arms sale to Ukraine via NATO funding, he funneled significant sums into the US treasury and celebrated the deal at the White House.
During a meeting in which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sat beside him in the Oval Office, Trump warned that if Russia does not reach a ceasefire agreement wiht Kyiv within 50 days, it would face 100 percent tariffs.
At this press-attended event, while recalling warm interactions and cordial phone conversations with Putin-often followed by new russian missile attacks on Ukraine-Trump repeatedly criticized the Russian president.
In part of his critique against Putin,Trump described him not as a murderer but as “a very tough person.” Yet during his unveiling of what he had recently called “a major statement” about Putin-which was soon revealed as an arms deal for Ukraine financed by NATO-he provided no further details. Both Trump and Rutte described this agreement as “very big.”
This is not Trump’s frist wartime transaction. Earlier this year, in a direct accord with Ukraine, he secured rights to rare mineral resources and profits in exchange for supplying weapons to Kyiv; however no weapons have been ordered under that arrangement so far.
Yesterday’s developments were remarkable for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who has sought since February ways to acquire weapons from the United States either directly or through allies such as Britain and other NATO members.
NATO generally imposes no restrictions on purchasing arms from coalition members. However, Washington maintains limits concerning whether American-made weaponry can be sold or transferred abroad.
Now Trump announced that delivery of Patriot air defense systems-which Ukraine urgently requires to counter extensive drone and missile attacks like those launched last month by russia-will soon commence. Additionally included could be long-range missile packages capable of striking deep inside Moscow’s territory with potential tactical or even strategic effects.
Recently ukraine demonstrated its ability through deception operations involving intelligence agents and drones-including operations codenamed “Spider Web” penetrating deep into Russian soil-but it also welcomes more long-range missiles such as “Storm Shadow,” supplied by Britain and France.
However Kyiv must recognize there is no guarantee that if putin signals openness toward ceasefire negotiations, trump will maintain arms supplies; earlier this year he halted shipments briefly and suspended intelligence sharing designed to blind Ukrainian informational capabilities.
Meanwhile NATO’s secretary general was eager to ensure Trump retained all necessary psychological credibility-including sudden policy shifts away from fully supporting every stance of Putin-in exchange for lending at least some support behind NATO itself.
Rutte fully endorsed Trump at this meeting: “The decision is you want Ukraine equipped with what it needs to defend itself against Russia. But you want Europeans to foot that bill-and frankly that’s totally logical.This was agreed upon during last week’s highly triumphant extraordinary NATO summit!”
Trump expressed hope that this armament deal through NATO would influence both warring sides while claiming new American weapons might embolden Ukraine. Yet his key sentence in yesterday’s high-profile Oval Office briefing was: “We have clear benchmarks known by both parties establishing what must be done.”
This refers repeatedly-and explicitly-to Trump’s position that “Ukraine must accept losing areas currently held by Kremlin forces (about 20 percent of its territory plus Crimea) and understand America will not guarantee its future security; Kyiv should abandon thoughts about joining NATO forever.”
The conclusion is clear: Trump’s agreement selling weapons and ammunition supplies represents only a slight shift motivated partly by personal grievances but does not constitute strategic action.
