U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Ukraine of giving nothing in return for U.S. support.
Trump told reporters in Washington on Monday that the U.S. had given a lot to Ukraine, but had received nothing the country.
Trump also stepped up his criticism of Kiev after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suggested that the U.S. president’s Kremlin-friendly approach put him on the wrong side of history.
“Zelensky doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Trump responded.
The Ukrainian president was “not helping matters much” in efforts to end the war, Trump said.
Meanwhile, U.S. news website Axios reported that Zelensky had complained about Washington withholding weapons deliveries.
Zelensky reportedly raised the accusation during a virtual meeting with U.S. senators from both parties.
Axios reported that Zelensky, said U.S. Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, was refusing to approve deliveries of Patriot and other air defence missiles, even though NATO countries had already paid for them, citing a transcript of the meeting.
According to Zelensky, all of this suggests that some political decision had been made to slow down support for us.
The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the suspension also affected deliveries from other Ukrainian partners that required Washington’s approval.
A senior U.S. Defence Department official disputed the reports, telling dpa that there had been no changes to the programme under which NATO countries purchase U.S. weapons for Ukraine.
The same applied to intelligence-sharing, the official said.
