US to send Patriot air defense system to Ukraine as furious Trump blasts two-faced Putin: 'He talks nice, then bombs everybody'
Trump did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
The U.S. president has grown increasingly disenchanted with Putin because the Russian leader has resisted Trump's attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked for more defensive capabilities to fend off a daily barrage of missile and drone attacks from Russia.
'We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening. But there's a little bit of a problem there. I don't like it,' Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington.
'We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that's the way we want it,' Trump said.
He plans to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to discuss Ukraine and other issues this week.
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The Guardian
2 minutes ago
- The Guardian
From Gaza to Ukraine, peace always seems just out of reach – and the reason isn't only political
The quest for peace in major conflicts has rarely been so desperate and so seemingly futile. In Gaza, talk of ceasefires, truces and pauses typically ends in tears. In Ukraine, the war is now well into its fourth year with no end in sight, despite Donald Trump's new 50-day deadline. Syria burns anew. Sudan's horrors never cease. Last year, state-based conflicts reached a peak – 61 across 36 countries. It was the highest recorded total since 1946. This year could be worse. The sheer scale and depravity of war crimes and other conflict-zone atrocities is extraordinary. The deliberate, illegal targeting and terrorising of civilians, the killing, maiming and abduction of children, and the use of starvation, sexual violence, torture and forced displacement as weapons of war have grown almost routine. Israel's killing last week of children queueing for water in Gaza was shocking, made doubly so by the fact that scenes like this have become so commonplace. 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' said Saint Matthew, but today, impartial mediators are in wickedly short supply. Surely everyone agrees: murdering and massacring innocents is morally indefensible. So why on earth is it allowed to continue? This same question is shouted out loud by grief-stricken parents in Rafah, Kyiv and Darfur, by UN relief workers, in pulpits, pubs and parliaments, in street protests and at Glastonbury. Why? WHY? The curse of moral relativism provides a clue. The fact is, not everyone does agree. What is absolutely morally indefensible to one group of people is relatively permissible or justifiable to another. This has held true throughout human history. Yet today's geopolitically and economically divided world is also ethically and morally fractured to a possibly unparalleled degree. Agreed, observed standards – what the American writer David Brooks terms a 'permanent moral order' – are lacking. The collapse of the international rules-based order is mirrored by this crisis of the moral order. Without accepted universal principles, the peaceful settlement of conflicts, foreign or domestic, becomes highly problematic. 'We have no objective standard by which to determine that one view is right and another view is wrong. So public arguments just go on indefinitely, at greater levels of indignation and polarisation,' Brooks argues. What's left is coercion and manipulation. No individual better personifies the moral-relativist confusion permeating contemporary life than Trump, the master coercer and manipulator. He believes, for example, that he deserves the 2025 Nobel peace prize. Yet Trump, in collusion with Israel, did bomb Iran recently, and killed numerous civilians. In his morally muddled view, that illegal act of aggression was justified because it restored the peace he had just broken. In a world wedded to war, Alfred Nobel's venerable peace prize looks increasingly anachronistic – and politicised. Barack Obama won it in 2009 for doing nothing. If only Trump would do nothing for the next four years. Worse, he has been nominated by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, arch foe to peace and morality. It might be preferable to replace the prize with a Warlord of the Year award – and put a bounty on the winner's head. Making a moral case for peace can be confusing, even controversial; ask any church or mosque leader. For many people, it seems, morality is a dirty word these days. It's fungible, negotiable and emotive – a matter primarily of individual choice and cultural belonging, not of duty, obligation or fidelity to a higher law. How else to explain why so many Americans turn a blind eye to Trump's astounding moral turpitude, illustrated again by the Jeffrey Epstein affair? Social identity trumps social conscience. Much of the Russian public suffers from a similarly chronic moral deficiency when contemplating Vladimir Putin's devastation of Ukraine. Intimidated dissenters avoid the subject. Others believe the disinformation fairytales spun by regime-controlled media. The majority inhabits a state of profound ignorance about the crimes committed in their name. When it's over, Russians may claim, like Germans in 1945, that they didn't know. Amorality is mitigated by mendacity. Israel's denial of peace in Palestine also comes at a high moral cost. Its reputation is in shreds, its prime minister has an arrest warrant issued against him for war crimes. Antisemitism is surging internationally as a direct result. How can so many Israelis live with their army's Gaza rampage, with the spectre of 58,000 corpses? Some say it would all stop if only the last hostages were freed; others that all Palestinians are Hamas. Some on the far right, forgetting their country's history, suggest the idea of a Palestinian nation is fiction. They want all 2 million of Gaza's residents caged in one huge concentration camp. Many Israelis passionately disagree. They desire peace. Their failure to force a change in government policy is moral as well as political. Also at fault are Americans, Russians and all in Britain and Europe, politicians and the public, who fail to speak out, who look the other way, who excuse the inexcusable for reasons of state or personal comfort – or who claim that murder and mayhem, wherever they occur, are relatively morally tolerable if committed, as argued by Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the prosecution of a 'just war'. This very modern failure, this retreat into subjective, made-to-measure morality, this renunciation of shared responsibility, is reversible. Universal ethical standards still apply. They are defined by the Geneva conventions, by other secular instruments of international law, through religious faith and through the social contract. They should be respected and strengthened. They are necessary, sometimes inconvenient truths. Ordinary people in ordinary times may pick and choose their moral battles. But ending major conflicts, and easing the suffering of millions, is a moral imperative that demands a determined collective response from all concerned. That way lies peace. That way lies salvation. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
US justice department asks to unseal grand jury transcripts in Epstein case
The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein's case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration's handling of records related to the wealthy financier. The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump's relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein's sex trafficking case. Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial. The justice department's announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump's base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier. Trump's demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump's name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein's 50th birthday. The letter bearing Trump's name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, 'Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,' according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely. Trump denied writing the letter, calling it 'false, malicious, and defamatory' and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was 'fake'. 'These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don't draw pictures,' the president wrote on social media. The justice department said in the court filings that it will work with with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released. 'Transparency in this process will not be at the expense of our obligation under the law to protect victims,' Blanche wrote. But despite the new push to release the grand jury transcripts, the administration has not announced plans to reverse course and release other evidence in its possession. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, had hyped the release of more materials after the first Epstein files disclosure in February sparked outrage because it contained no new revelations. A judge would have to approve the release of the grand jury transcripts, and it's likely to be a lengthy process to decide what can become public and to make redactions to protect sensitive witness and victim information. The records would show testimony of witnesses and other evidence that was presented by prosecutions during the secret grand jury proceedings, when a panel decides whether there is enough evidence to bring an indictment, or a formal criminal charge.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump once hosted party for ‘young women' where Epstein was the only guest, says report
Donald Trump once hosted a party with 'young women' where the disgraced late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein"was the only other guest,' according to a report. The president is under pressure to release all files relating to the Epstein case, which he has so far refused to do despite a 2024 election promise. The anecdote was part of a New York Times piece on Saturday entitled 'Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein.' It states that 'For nearly 15 years, the two men socialized together in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., before a falling out that preceded Mr. Epstein's first arrest.' The piece goes on to describe Trump hosting 'a party at Mar-a-Lago for young women in a so-called calendar girl competition, Mr. Epstein was the only other guest.' It states that the party was organized by Florida businessman George Houraney. 'Mr. Houraney recalled being surprised that Mr. Epstein was the only other person on the guest list,' it states. 'I said, 'Donald, this is supposed to be a party with V.I.P.s,' Mr. Houraney told the newspaper about the party in 2019. 'You're telling me it's you and Epstein?'' It comes just days after a bombshell report by The Wall Street Journal, which a bawdy message and doodle from Trump among an album of letters celebrating Epstein's 50th birthday. The president has denied that the drawing or letter was his doing and is now suing the Journal, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, and two journalists. On Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a motion in New York 'to release grand jury transcripts associated with' the Epstein case.
