Trump: Putin has ‘really let me down’ on Ukraine peace efforts

President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s been “let down” by his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

“The one that I thought would be easiest would be because of my relationship with President Putin,” Trump said during a joint press conference in London with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “But he’s let me down. He’s really let me down. Was going to be Russia and Ukraine. But we’ll see how that turns out.”

Months of U.S.-led peace negotiations — including an Alaska summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — have not led to breakthroughs in ending the war in Ukraine. 

War is a different thing,” Trump said. “Things happen that are very opposite of what you thought. You thought you’re going to have an easy time or a hard time, and it turns out to be the reverse.”

Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) next week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday. Putin will not be in attendance — Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. 

Trump said of Putin: “He’s killing many people, and he’s losing more people that he’s, you know, than he’s killing. I mean, frankly, the Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers, but, yeah, he’s let me down. I don’t like to see — it’s death.”

The president then mused that the war “doesn’t affect the United States.”

To Starmer, he said, “Of course, you are a lot closer to the scene than we are. We have a whole ocean separating us. But I will say this. It’s millions of people have died in that war. Millions of souls. And they’re not American soldiers, mostly soldiers. As you know, the soldiers are being killed at levels nobody’s seen since the Second World War, but they’re being, they’re being killed. And I feel I have an obligation to get it settled for that reason.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine expects $3.5 billion in U.S. weapons to soon funnel in to fund its war effort, Zelenskyy said Wednesday.

“We have received more than $2 billion from our partners specifically for the PURL program. We will get additional funds in October. I think we will reach about $3.5–3.6 billion,” the president added. That funding came from Ukraine’s allies in Europe.

We will definitely have Patriot and HIMARS missiles,” he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

The U.S. approved the first new weapons packages for Ukraine this week. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby signed off on two $500 million packages under the PURL program, Reuters first reported. 

“The Department of War has facilitated this first sale of weapons in line with President Trump’s America First priorities and efforts to bring this brutal war, which was brought on by Joe Biden’s incompetence, to an end,” a senior administration official told Fox News Digital, confirming the sale. 

The Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, was created to streamline Ukraine’s access to advanced weapons by pooling allied contributions into U.S.-managed procurement. Instead of sending cash directly to Kyiv, partners commit funds that Washington uses to acquire systems from American defense firms.

Germany, Poland, the UK, and other NATO members are believed to be leading contributors, though the exact breakdown hasn’t been made public