The United States and Germany have struck a deal to provide Ukraine with weaponry to protect cities from nightly Russian attacks.
Germany was prepared to pay for the systems as part of a broader US deal to sell Europe arms destined for Ukraine.
Details began to emerge on July 10 when Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would buy US-made air defence systems.
“We are also prepared to purchase additional Patriot systems from the US to make them available to Ukraine,” Merz was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump told NBC News that the US would sell NATO US-made weapons, including the Patriots, that NATO would give to Ukraine.
Adding to the crescendo, US Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS on Sunday: “In the coming days, you will see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves.”
Meanwhile, Russia continued to capture Ukrainian villages.
On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized Zelyonaya Dolina in the eastern region of Donetsk and Sobolevka in Kharkiv in the northeast. Nikolayevka in Donetsk fell on Sunday, Malinovka in Zaporizhia on Monday and Novokhatskoye in Donetsk on Wednesday.
Yet even at this accelerated rate of 15sq km (6sq miles) a day, Russia would need 89 years to capture the rest of Ukraine, The Economist magazine estimated.
Russia continued to pound Ukraine’s cities with combinations of drones and missiles every night over the past week.
The biggest attack came early on Saturday. The Ukrainian air force said it downed or electronically suppressed 577 of 597 drones launched overnight and 25 of 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles.
June also saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said.
Trump: ‘We’re getting our money back in full’
Trump announced on Monday at the White House that he had approved $10bn in weapons sales to Ukraine, which were to be paid for by Ukraine’s European allies.
“We’ve made a deal today where we’re going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” he said.
He doubled down on that financial message, telling reporters on Tuesday that after spending billions to help Ukraine, “we’re getting our money back in full.”
Graham played on the same theme.
“Stay tuned for a plan where America will begin to sell to our European allies tremendous amounts of weapons that can benefit Ukraine,” he told CBS.
Trump said he would send 17 Patriot systems to Ukraine. It was not clear if this meant 17 batteries or 17 launchers. “It’s everything. It’s Patriots. It’s all of them. It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said.
A Patriot battery usually contains six launchers, each typically carrying four missiles.
The particulars of the deal have remained murky and perhaps deliberately so.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who was in Washington, DC, on Monday, didn’t disclose details.
“But one thing is clear – and this is a message to all other European NATO members: Everyone must open their wallets. It’s about urgently raising the funds needed, especially for air defence, because Ukraine is under enormous pressure,” Pistorius said.
Russia has increased its attacks on Ukraine’s cities since the beginning of the year. In June alone, Moscow launched 330 missiles and 5,000 drones against Ukraine.
While Patriots are too expensive to use on drones, they are the only weapon in Ukraine that can shoot down ballistic missiles and are also effective against cruise missiles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in April that Ukraine needed 10 more Patriot systems to protect its cities – presumably referring to complete batteries.
Germany’s head of defence planning, Major General Christian Freuding, said on Saturday that Pistorius and his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, had discussed a German offer to buy two Patriot systems for Ukraine. It was not clear if Pistorius’s visit to Washington, DC, was related to that.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the Patriot systems were “already being shipped, … coming in from Germany”.
Separately, Zelenskyy told Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, when they met in Kyiv on Monday that Ukraine was ready “to purchase American weapons, particularly air defence systems”.
Russia reacts with fury to US-German deal as Trump weighs sanctions
Moscow has balked at the Western deal for Ukraine.
“Mr Merz is a fierce proponent of confrontation on all fronts and of aggressively mobilising Europe,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Germany, France and the United Kingdom were “attempting to raise Europe for war, … a direct war against Russia”.
Trump also announced possible secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.
“We are very, very unhappy with Russia – I am,” he said Monday in the White House while sitting next to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “I am disappointed in President [Vladimir] Putin because I thought we would have a deal two months ago.”
Trump said he was putting Putin on 50 days notice.
“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. It’s very simple. And they’ll be at 100 percent.”
The tariffs would be levied on goods the US imports from countries that buy Russian oil, an idea Graham has aggressively pursued in recent weeks, naming China, India and Brazil as the worst offenders.
“We would like to understand what is behind this statement about 50 days,” Lavrov said. “Earlier, there were also the deadlines of 24 hours and of 100 days. We’ve seen it all and really would like to understand the motivation of the US president.”
Lavrov was referring to Trump’s campaign boast that he would end the war in Ukraine in a day and Kellogg’s self-imposed 100-day goal to bring about a ceasefire.
Some observers are sceptical about whether Trump will get tough on Putin, whom he has openly admired.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, shrugged off Trump’s remarks.
“Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” he wrote on social media.
But Peskov on Tuesday called Trump’s remarks “very serious”, adding: “Something in them concerns President Putin personally.”
On Wednesday, the normally restrained Peskov sounded even more alarmed that Europe was now willing to foot the bill for the war without US assistance.
“What we are observing so far is that the Europeans are displaying a completely aggressive militarist stance, declaring their intention to spend enormous funds to purchase weapons, to further provoke the continuation of war,” Peskov said.
“Of course, it is very hard to predict anything amid such an emotional state, bordering on irrationality, which reigns on the European continent,” he added.
The only thing that assuaged Russian concerns was indecision over sending Ukraine Germany’s Taurus missiles, which can strike deep inside Russia with large warheads.
That news suggested that Europeans “still have some sense of reason left”, Peskov said on Wednesday.
European defence and reconstruction without the US
Europe’s willingness to spend on defence may also have brought forth the dawn of more independence from the US.
Last week, the UK and France announced a scaling-up of their Combined Joint Force to a corps level, a reorientation of that force from overseas expeditions, “refocusing it on defending Europe” and upgrading it “to war-fighting readiness”.
They announced new procurement of Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles and joint research on a generation of missiles that would “harness the power of AI”.
They also issued the Northwood Declaration on closer nuclear coordination. “Any adversary threatening the vital interests of Britain or France could be confronted by the strength of the nuclear forces of both nations,” the UK Ministry of Defence said.
France and Britain are the only European states with a nuclear deterrent.
The US Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, approved $500m in security assistance for Ukraine as part of its draft language for the next fiscal year – the only military aid announced under the Trump administration.
Under former President Joe Biden, the US spent $64.6bn on military aid to Ukraine, according to a tracker run by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Biden also left $4bn unspent in the form of a presidential authority to draw down weapons from US stockpiles and send them to Ukraine. Trump has not exercised that authority, insisting that the US needs to be paid back.
As Trump touted $10bn in weapons sales, the European Commission announced 10 billion euros ($11.6bn) in investments in Ukraine, leveraged through 2.3 billion euros ($2.7bn) in loans and grants from European institutions.
The announcement came at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.
The money is for rebuilding critical infrastructure and networks and helping small businesses.
“We need a Marshall Plan-style approach,” Zelenskyy declared upon arrival in Rome, referring to the post-World War II system of grants from the US that rebuilt the European economy.
