US President Donald Trump announced that the US would supply Ukraine with billions of dollars of weapons “very soon”, including badly needed Patriot air defence missiles, and impose 100% secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Russia no ceasefire deal was agreed in the next 50-days, during a press conference in the Oval office on July 14.

Trump said the weapons will be American made, but Europe will pay for them.

The announcement was made during a meeting with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte who was at the White House for meetings to coordinate European and US actions to deal with Russia.

Trump has put very little pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin since he took office at the start of the year, but has clearly become frustrated in the recent months. The US-brokered ceasefire talks that kicked off in Riyadh on February 18 have stalled and the two sides have barely talked since the last meeting in Istanbul on June 3. Following his last call with Putin, Trump said that “no progress” was made and in the last week he has made his most pro-Ukraine, anti-Russia comments to date.

Weapons wish list

Under pressure from his allies, Trump said a deal was struck with European Nato allies at the Nato summit in the Hague where Europe would take over the burden of supplying Ukraine and would
“pay 100%” for all new weapon’s deliveries to Ukraine.

"We're going to make top-of-the-line weapons, and they'll be sent to Nato," Trump said in the Oval Office, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reuters reports. He added that the package would include the Patriot air defence systems Kyiv has been urgently requesting.

"It's a full complement with the batteries," Trump said. "We're going to have some come very soon, within days... a couple of the countries that have Patriots are going to swap over and will replace the Patriots with the ones they have." Trump added that some or all of 17 Patriot batteries ordered by other countries could be redirected to Ukraine “very quickly.” The President was presumably referring to Poland, Romania, and Sweden which have together ordered a total of 20 batteries.

Rutte confirmed that Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada had expressed interest in contributing to the rearmament effort, all of which have Patriot systems already in place.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who met with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg the same day, said discussions focused on “the path to peace” and included talks on “strengthening Ukraine's air defence, joint production and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe.”

Secondary sanctions

Trump also said that if no deal was reached after a 50-day deadline, the US would impose secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil – previously considered a “nuclear option.” While seventeen rounds of sanctions have been imposed on Russia, until now the US and Europe have shied way from imposing sanctions on Russia’s main trade partners, most notably India and China.

"We're going to be doing secondary tariffs," he said. "If we don't have a deal in 50 days, it's very simple, and they'll be at 100%." A White House official clarified this would include 100% tariffs on Russian goods and sanctions on nations continuing to trade with Moscow.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed any effort aligned with international law that could lead to a political solution. “An immediate ceasefire was needed to pave the way,” he said, Reuters reported.

It is not clear what will happen if Trump tries to carry through on his threat of imposing 100% secondary sanctions on China or India. The US is already in a fraught trade war with most of the Global South after his Liberation Day deadline to do a new trade deal expired on July 9.

Previously, Russia’s trade partners have been cautious and tried to avoid second sanctions. When the Biden administration introduced the US harsh financial sanction last year, Turkish and Chinese banks cut all ties with their Russian clients for fear of being hit by US secondary sanctions. However, when Trump hit China with proposed tariffs of more than 100% he was forced to back down after China threatened to cut the US off from supplies of rare earth metals (REMs).

At the least, implementing 100% secondary sanctions seems likely to ignite a major trade war between the US and the leading emerging markets. Trump is already in a major row with Brazil after he slapped it with a 50% tariff that is also clearly politically motivated.

Trump boasted that countries would be queueing up to do trade deals with the US after he announced his tariff regime, but in the end only three countries did deals and analysts point out that he has a habit of extending his deadlines.

17 interceptors or batteries?

While Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) will welcome a change of heart by Trump and the fresh commitment to Ukraine’s support, many questions remain open.

On the very next day after Putin’s “no progress” phone call with Trump, he launched a devastating missile barrage on Ukraine targeting military and key infrastructure assets across the country that has only intensified since then. The Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) continues to make slow and costly progress on the battlefield and some 50,000 troops are massed on Ukraine’s Sumy region border as the summer offensive gets underway.

Russia has begun to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defences as it runs low on Patriot missile ammunition, the only weapon it has that is effective against the dozens of missiles Russia has been firing everyday for a month now. Moreover, the highly accurate Russian missiles have specifically been used to target Nato-supplied weapons dumps and Patriot air defence batteries.

It was not entirely clear if Trump was referring to 17 Patriot batteries to be sent to Ukraine or just 17 Patriot interceptor rockets. If the former, then that would be a game changer. During the Nato summit in Holland, Zelenskiy presented Trump with a shopping list of weapons that included a request for 10 Patriot batteries. Previously, the former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine needs a total of 22 batteries to protect all its major cities.

However, as typically it takes two Patriot interceptor rockets to take down one Russian missile, particularly the new hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, if Trump was only talking about interceptor rockets then it is not enough to protect Ukraine for more than a single day.

Patriot production bottlenecks

Trump said that 17 Patriots could be transferred “in days” which strongly suggests that he was talking about the interceptor rockets as there are simply not enough Patriot batteries in Europe to be able to transfer 17 to Ukraine in a week. Amongst Ukraine’s European allies, many have Patriot batteries but limited to a total of 18: Germany (12), the Netherlands (3), Romania (2) and Spain (1).

However, the US maintains a strategic reserve of 60 or more batteries but the US has become very reluctant to dig deeper into its stock pile; The Guardian reported this month that the US only has 25% of what it needs to meet its strategic goals. 2

It seems more likely that Trump is talking about the approximately 35 Patriot systems on order by Europe and allies that will be transferred to Ukraine when ready. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged the two batteries it has on order to Ukraine that are due to arrive by the end of this year. Norway has also pledged to send one of its batteries to Ukraine. But unless Europe completely denudes itself of air defences it cannot send Ukraine 17 batteries quickly.

If Trump is talking about Patriot systems on order, Raytheon Technologies Corporation that makes Patriots can only produce 4-6 batteries a year and already has a significant 5-8 year backlog of orders. As of mid-2025, Raytheon Technologies has a backlog of approximately 30 to 35 Patriot batteries on order: Poland (8). Romania (7), Sweden (5), Switzerland (5), and Taiwan (6) on top of Nato’s needs.