US President Donald Trump said he will send Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian leader Vladimir Putin "talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening".
Trump did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the US would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
The US 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 Zelenskyy 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."
He plans to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to discuss Ukraine and other issues this week.
The US military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats and intercepted Iranian cruise missiles and drones as Tehran sought to thwart a new US naval effort to open shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
A blast at a fireworks factory in China has killed at least 26 people and injured 61, flattening buildings and sending towering clouds of smoke into the sky, and prompting President Xi Jinping to order a thorough investigation, state media reported on Tuesday.
A Russian overnight missile and drone attack on Ukrainian gas production facilities killed five people, including two rescue workers, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday, as Kyiv and Moscow exchanged rival ceasefire proposals.
Two cases of the deadly hantavirus have been confirmed, and five more are suspected among people who were on a luxury cruise ship now held in the Atlantic near Cape Verde, the World Health Organisation said in its most detailed update on the outbreak.