By Anastasiia Malenko, Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt
KYIV/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg began talks in Kyiv on Monday on security and sanctions against Russia after the U.S. president said he would send Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine.
In a sharp departure from his earlier stance, Trump was also expected to announce a new plan to arm Ukraine with offensive weapons, American news website Axios cited two sources familiar with the matter as saying.
Trump’s moves underline his growing disenchantment with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the lack of progress in U.S.-led efforts to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s more than three-year-old war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was expected to meet Kellogg in the Ukrainian capital, wants more defensive capabilities to fend off intense missile and drone attacks from Russia, which holds about one-fifth of Ukraine, is advancing in the east and shows no sign of abandoning its main war goals.
“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington on Sunday.
“We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump said.
Trump did not say how many Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
Trump will also meet NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this week to discuss Ukraine among other issues, and German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius is set to visit Washington for talks with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Berlin has offered to pay for Patriot systems for Ukraine, under a proposal made public by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and has emerged as an important player as European states in NATO move to build up their military strength under U.S. pressure.
Putin told Trump by phone on July 3 that Moscow wants a negotiated end to the war but will not step back from its original goals, a Kremlin aide said.
A year ago, Putin was ready to halt the war with a negotiated ceasefire recognising existing battlefield lines, Reuters reported at the time. But at talks last month, Russia set out punitive terms for peace, demanding Kyiv give up big new chunks of territory and accept limits on the size of its army.
WAR GOALS
Putin says Russia was compelled to go to war in Ukraine to prevent the country from joining NATO and being used by the Western alliance as a launch pad to attack Russia. Ukraine and its European allies say that is a specious pretext for what they call an imperial-style war.
Zelenskiy said he had instructed military commanders to present Kellogg with information on Russia’s capabilities and Ukraine’s prospects.
“Defence, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protecting our people, strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and the United States — there are many topics to discuss,” Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential administration in Kyiv, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians on both sides, have been killed or wounded in Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two.
In the latest reported fighting, Ukrainian drones attacked a training centre at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine on Sunday evening, the Russian-installed administration of the Russia-held plant said on Monday. Ukraine has not commented on the alleged attack.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Lamarque in Washington, Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Lidia Kelly in Warsaw, Writing by Timothy HeritageEditing by Gareth Jones)
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