WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, saying Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine is “killing a lot of people” on both sides.
“I’m not happy with him, I can tell you that much right now. This is killing a lot of people,” Trump said of Putin during a meeting with his Cabinet.
The president also acknowledged that his previous suggestions that he might be able to cajole Russia’s president into bringing the fighting to a close and quickly ending the war in Ukraine has “turned out to be tougher.”
It was notable for a president who has all but aligned himself with Putin at moments in the past and has praised the Russian leader effusively at times — though less so in recent months.
The Cabinet meeting comments came a day after Trump said the United States will now send more weapons to Ukraine — dramatically reversing a previous announcement of a pause in critical, previously approved firepower deliveries to Kyiv in the midst of concerns that America’s own military stockpiles have declined too much.
“We wanted (to) put defensive weapons (in). Putin is not, he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said during the Cabinet meeting, explaining the pause’s reversal. “It’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I’ve approved that.”
Trump’s decision to remove the pause follows his privately having expressed frustration with Pentagon officials for announcing a halt in some deliveries last week — an action he felt wasn’t properly coordinated with the White House, according to three people familiar with the matter.
But the president refused to provide more details on that matter Tuesday.
“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically to a reporter who pressed him on the weapons pause’s original approval. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Still, his expressing open displeasure with Putin — especially after approving a resumption of U.S. weapons to Ukraine — underscores how much Trump’s thinking on Russia and Ukraine policy has shifted since he returned to the White House in January. It also lays bare how tricky navigating the ongoing conflict has proved to be.
Trump suggested during last year’s campaign that he could quickly end the Russia-Ukraine war. But by April, he was using his Truth Social account to exhort Putin to end military strikes on the Ukrainian capital.
“Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote. But large-scale Russian attacks on Ukraine have continued since then and Trump’s public pronouncements on Putin have continued to sour.
Trump said after a call last week with Putin that he was unhappy with Russia’s president and “I don’t think he’s looking to stop” the war. Then, speaking at the start of a dinner he hosted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday night, Trump said, “I’m not happy with President Putin at all.”
Asked during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting what his growing displeasure with Putin might mean for U.S. foreign policy, Trump declined to discuss specifics.
“I will say, the Ukrainians were brave. But we gave them the best equipment ever made,” Trump said. He also said that without U.S. weapons and military support, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 might have otherwise sparked what “probably would have been a very quick war.”
“It would have been a war that lasted three or four days,” he said, “but they had the benefit of unbelievable equipment.”
