President Donald Trump reportedly told his top national security aides to not publicly tout a new U.S. lethal defensive weapons sale to Ukraine, for fear of angering Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to NBC News, it took “months” for those aides to convince the president to sign off on the sale to Ukraine’s military, which is fighting Russian-backed separatists. “He doesn’t want us to bring it up,” a White House official told NBC News. “It is not something he wants to talk about.” The network also reported that Trump told the Russian president during a phone call last week: “If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I’ll win.”
