U.S. President Donald Trump has suspended military aid to Ukraine in the wake of his contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, both citing an anonymous White House official.
The pause is set to last until Trump decides that Zelensky is working in good faith to reach a peace deal with Russia, according to the WSJ.
“The president has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” the newspaper quoted its source as saying.
The suspension appears to apply to arms deliveries that had been approved by previous U.S. President Joe Biden under presidential drawdown authority (PDA) from Pentagon stockpiles. These aid packages included munitions, missiles, and other weapons systems. The U.S. continued the deliveries after Trump took office, but not all the weapons from Biden’s aid packages have been sent to Ukraine.
It’s unclear whether the pause allows the U.S. military to supply ammunition for weapons systems already delivered to Ukraine and whether they will continue sharing intelligence on missile launches, Reuters noted.
A senior Trump administration official told the WSJ that all of the U.S. president’s top national security advisers approved the decision to suspend deliveries.
The newspaper wrote that Trump was angered by Zelensky’s statement on Monday that an “agreement to end the war is still very, very far away” and decided to show he’s “serious” about bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table. “The Ukrainians didn’t think we were serious. We had to make a demonstration,” the official said.
Additionally, current and former U.S. officials told the WSJ that the Trump administration had earlier halted funding for new arms sales to Ukraine.
The suspension of U.S. arms deliveries will leave Ukraine less able to withstand Russian attacks, analysts told the WSJ. Ukraine will also be less able to conduct long-range strikes and defend its rear positions, the paper’s sources said.
