Trump to sell weapons to support Ukraine, threatens Putin with 100% tariffs if peace deal not reached

President Donald Trump plans to sell U.S. weapons to NATO allies who will supply them to Ukraine as he threatens Russia with increased tariffs if Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t come to the negotiating table.

It’s a new tactic in Trump’s quest to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia.

Speaking on Monday in front of reporters at the White House with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the U.S. president said the weapons will be manufactured by the U.S. but paid for by NATO allies.

Trump emphasized that NATO would take a leading role in distributing the delivery of Patriot Missile Defense systems, with some of the early systems coming from Germany, eventually to be replaced by U.S. shipments.

“We are very unhappy, I am, with Russia,” Trump said. “But we’ll discuss that maybe a different day.”

Trump then added the U.S. would be imposing “very severe tariffs “on Russia within 50 days if they don’t have a “deal” to end the war. Trump didn’t specify whether he meant a ceasefire deal or peace deal.

The U.S. president pegged the proposed Russian tariffs at 100%, calling them “secondary tariffs.”

On Sunday, Trump has also suggested the U.S. would send offensive weapons to Ukraine, according to Reuters, including long-range missiles able to strike deep into the heart of Russia, Axios reported.

“Trump is really pissed at Putin. His announcement tomorrow is going to be very aggressive,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told Axios on Sunday, although he was unable to confirm any details of the announcement.

The new weapons shipment was first proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit, according to Axios

“Zelensky came like a normal human being, not crazy, and was dressed like a somebody that should be at NATO,” an unnamed U.S. official told Axios. “He had a group of people with him that also seemed not crazy. So they had a good conversation” with Trump.

The Lion reported on the transformational NATO meeting two weeks ago, noting at the time that Zelensky wore a suit, a departure from his usual quasi-military attire of a dark green sweatshirt and dark green pants.

Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Russia’s Putin, with whom he continues to say he has a cordial relationship.

The U.S. president was hoping he could leverage that relationship into an early peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, a campaign theme he vigorously championed in the 2024 presidential election.

But now Trump wants to see action, not words, from the Russian president.

“I talk to him a lot about how to reach a peaceful settlement in Ukraine. And I always hang up the phone and say, ‘Well, that was a good conversation,’” Trump noted. “Then they fire rockets at Kyiv or some other city. And I say, ‘Strange.’ And when it happens three or four times, as you say – talks mean nothing.”

Trump said he has often been prodded by First Lady Melania Trump, who was born in the former communist state of Yugoslavia.

While Yugoslavia was never under Russian Soviet occupation, the nation was always under the threat of occupation by Russia.

“I go home, and I tell the First Lady, ‘You know, I spoke to Putin today. We had a wonderful conversation.’ And she says, ‘Oh really? Another Ukrainian city was just hit.’”

A deciding factor in Trump switching gears towards Russia was a July 3 phone call between Putin and the U.S. president, Axios reported.

In this phone call, the Russian strongman told Trump he’d make a determined push to occupy more Ukrainian territory over the next 60 days.

Trump later told French president Emmanuel Macron he felt Putin wanted to swallow all of Ukraine.

Since the NATO summit and the early July phone call with Putin, Trump has been mulling options about how to send Ukraine more help.

The breakthrough came on Thursday during a phone call with the U.S. president, Rutte said.

Trump asked the NATO general secretary whether the European countries would pay for the weapon shipment, which Rutte readily agreed they would do.

Rutte emphasized the shipments of weapons to Ukraine will not come out of stocks that the U.S. will need to defend itself. He characterized the weapons purchases as “massive numbers of military equipment” for a variety of Ukrainian needs, including long-range missiles.

The head of NATO characterized the first shipment as one of many to Ukraine if a peace agreement isn’t reached.

“If I was Vladimir Putin today, and you [President Trump] are speaking about what you’re planning on doing in 50 days… I would reconsider [if] I should not take negotiations more seriously,” Rutte told reporters.