Trump Says He May Send Additional Patriot Systems to Ukraine

President Trump said Wednesday that he was weighing sending additional Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine amid intensifying Russian attacks. But it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump was considering donating the Patriots to Ukraine — as his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and several European allies have done — or selling them to Kyiv.

“We’re going to see if we can make some available,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference at the NATO summit in The Hague, where he held a nearly hourlong meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But Mr. Trump cautioned that the systems, which Mr. Zelensky proposed buying directly in April, were “very hard to get” and in limited supply, especially with the United States already providing some to Israel.

Mr. Zelensky said in a statement that his meeting with Mr. Trump had been “meaningful” and that the pair had discussed the prospects for a cease-fire. But neither he nor the White House offered details about how the meeting unfolded or whether it would lead additional American support.

Mr. Zelensky has a complicated relationship with Mr. Trump, marked by meetings that have at times been tense and fraught, and at other times more substantive.

His visit to the White House in February, where he was supposed to sign a landmark bilateral minerals deal, quickly unraveled as the two leaders publicly argued in the Oval Office.

It took two more months for them to sit down together again, on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in late April. That meeting helped defuse tensions between Kyiv and Washington and finalize the minerals deal.