Trump envoy arrives in Kyiv as US pledges Patriot missiles to Ukraine
Mr Trump teased last week that he would make a ‘major statement’ on Russia on Monday.
US president Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has arrived in Kyiv, a senior Ukrainian official said, as anticipation grew over possible changes in the Trump administration’s policies on the more than three-year war.
Mr Trump teased last week that he would make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday.
The president made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s unbudging stance on US-led peace efforts.
Mr Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Mr Putin and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal.
At the same time, Mr Trump accused Mr Zelensky of prolonging the war and called him a “dictator without elections”.
But Russia’s relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Mr Trump’s patience. In April, he urged Mr Putin to “STOP!” launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month he said in a social media post that the Russian leader “has gone absolutely CRAZY!” as the bombardments continued.
“I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said,” Mr Trump said late on Sunday.
“He’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”
Mr Trump confirmed the US was sending Ukraine badly needed US-made Patriot air defence missiles to help it fend off Russia’s intensifying aerial attacks.
He said the European Union would pay the US for the “various pieces of very sophisticated” weaponry it was sending.
But the EU is not allowed under its treaties to buy weapons. EU member countries are buying and sending weapons to Ukraine, just as Nato member countries are buying and sending weapons.
EU countries set up the European Peace Facility so that countries which supply arms to Ukraine could be refunded to backfill their own stocks.
Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine’s air defences are struggling to counter.
June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said on Thursday.
Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles in June than in the same month last year, it said.
This has happened at the same time as Russia’s bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 620-mile (1,000km) front line.
A top ally of Mr Trump, Republican senator Lindsey Graham, said on Sunday that the conflict was nearing an inflection point as Mr Trump showed growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is a cause that Mr Trump had previously dismissed as being a waste of US taxpayer money.
“In the coming days, you’ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,” Mr Graham said on the CBS network.
He said: “One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there’s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Mr Putin’s envoy for international investment who took part in talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia in February, dismissed what he said were efforts to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington.
“Constructive dialogue between Russia and the United States is more effective than doomed-to-fail attempts at pressure,” Mr Dmitriev said in a post on Telegram.
“This dialogue will continue, despite titanic efforts to disrupt it by all possible means.”
“Equal dialogue, mutual respect, realism and economic co-operation are the foundations of global security,” he said, echoing comments by Mr Putin.
Meanwhile, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte was due in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. He planned to hold talks with Mr Trump, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth as well as members of Congress.
Talks during the visit by Mr Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired general Keith Kellogg, would cover “defence, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protection of our people and enhancing co-operation between Ukraine and the United States”, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andrii Yermak, said.
“Russia does not want a ceasefire. Peace through strength is President Donald Trump’s principle, and we support this approach,” Mr Yermak said.
Russian troops conducted a combined aerial strike at Shostka, in the northern Sumy region of Ukraine, using glide bombs and drones early on Monday morning, killing two people, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
Four others were injured, including a seven-year-old, it said.
Overnight from Sunday in to Monday, Russia fired four S-300/400 missiles and 136 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the air force said.
It said that 61 drones were intercepted and 47 more were either jammed or lost from radars mid-flight.
Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said its air defences downed 11 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.
