Washington, July 9: US President Donald Trump has said he has approved sending additional weapons to Ukraine and is considering new sanctions on Russia.

"We're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I've approved that," Trump said on Tuesday during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Xinhua news agency reported.

Trump also expressed dissatisfaction with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now," Trump said, noting that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are dying in the thousands.

Trump also said he is considering whether to support a bipartisan Senate bill that will impose sweeping sanctions on Russia.

Earlier, Trump on Monday announced that the US will send additional weapons to Ukraine, shortly after Moscow claimed new territorial gains.

He made the remarks at the White House on Monday (US time), acknowledging Ukraine's mounting challenges on the battlefield amid intensified Russian strikes.

"We're going to have to send more weapons -- defensive weapons primarily?" Trump told reporters, noting the scale of attacks Ukraine has endured.

"They're getting hit very, very hard," he added while clarifying that he was "not happy" with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US President's assurance came days after Washington had paused certain arms shipments to Kyiv -- a decision that caught Ukrainian officials by surprise and prompted urgent requests for clarification.

Just a few days ago, Trump expressed dissatisfaction with the situation in Ukraine, stating that there has been no progress in resolving the conflict following a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We talked about a lot of things, including Iran, and we also talked about the war in Ukraine. I'm not happy about that [situation],” said Trump, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews near Washington.

“I didn't make any progress with him at all,” he emphasised, referring to the settlement of the conflict.

The Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov mentioned that a telephone conversation between Putin and Trump lasted for almost an hour.

“Naturally, the issues surrounding Ukraine were discussed. Donald Trump has once again raised the issue of ending the hostilities as soon as possible. In turn, Vladimir Putin noted that we still continued the search for a political, negotiated solution to the conflict. He informed his counterpart on the progress in implementing the humanitarian agreements reached during the second round of direct Russian-Ukrainian talks held in Istanbul. He also noted Russia was willing to pursue negotiations,” read a statement issued by the Russian President’s office.

“Additionally, the President of Russia said that Russia would strive to achieve its goals, namely the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, the bitter confrontation that we are seeing now. Russia will not back down from these goals,” the statement added.

According to Ushakov, there was a detailed discussion of the situation surrounding Iran and the state of affairs in the Middle East in general.

(IANS)

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