Trump suspends military aid to Ukraine to apply pressure on Zelenskiy

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered a pause in the delivery of military aid to Ukraine, a move that redoubles the pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskiy to show willingness to conclude a peace agreement with Moscow, the White House has confirmed. The measure comes three days after the public rebuke, broadcast in front of television cameras in the Oval Office, of the Ukrainian president by Trump and his vice president, J. D. Vance. While he applies the stick to Zelenskiy, Trump offers carrots to Vladimir Putin: the Pentagon has confirmed the suspension of its cyber offensives against Moscow, and the White House seems to be considering the lifting of some sanctions.

In the aftermath of that blowback — in which Trump reproached his counterpart for not being sufficiently grateful to the United States and questioned whether he really wanted to reach an agreement, after Zelenskiy had highlighted the unreliability of Putin — senior U.S. officials indicated that the Republican was considering cutting off the military aid to Kyiv that had been approved by his predecessor, Joe Biden, and was still pending delivery.

“The president has made it clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We have paused and revised our aid to ensure that it contributes to a solution,” a senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday in making the case for the drastic move.

Trump held a meeting Monday with his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to decide on the next steps in the war.

Assistance is now suspended until the U.S. president decides that Zelenskiy shows a genuine commitment to peace. The order extends to all weaponry not already on Ukrainian soil, including materiel that was already in transit or in Poland waiting to cross the border into the invaded country.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the U.S. Congress has approved $175 billion in assistance for Ukraine, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. There was still $3.85 billion to be used, which had not been included in the across-the-board freeze on foreign aid funds ordered by the Republican administration immediately after Trump’s return to the White House.

The decision represents a hard blow for Kyiv given Washington is its main supplier of military aid. And it is also a demonstration that neither Zelenskiy’s public messages of gratitude towards his hitherto indispensable partner, repeated several times over the weekend, nor the European intervention — whose leaders met this Sunday in London to reiterate their support for Ukraine and to draw up a peace plan acceptable to Kyiv and which the U.S. could join — have managed to make a dent in Trump’s indignation.

In an interview with Fox News, Vance claimed that Kyiv’s European allies are not helping Zelenskiy by failing to pressure him to end the war. “Zelenskiy, he goes to Europe and a lot of our European friends puff him up. They say you know, you’re a freedom fighter. You need to keep fighting forever. Fighting forever with what? With whose money? With whose ammunition, and with whose lives? The president is actually taking a much more realistic perspective and saying, this can’t go on forever. We can’t fund this thing forever. The Ukrainians can’t fight forever. So let’s bring this thing to a peaceful settlement” he declared.

Trump lashed out twice on Monday against the Ukrainian leader, from whom he already interprets any statement as malicious. After Zelenskiy declared that he believes peace with Russia “is still a long way off,” the Republican took it as proof that his counterpart wants to delay the end of the war. And he warned him in a message on social networks that “America will not put up with it for much longer.”

Trump added: “This guy doesn’t want there to be peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskiy, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S. — Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia.”

In his statements to the press Monday, Trump reiterated that for contacts between his administration and Kyiv to resume, Zelenskiy will have to profusely show his gratitude to the United States for the aid received during three years of war, which the Republican falsely puts at $350 billion (in reality it is less than $200 billion). He also seemed to be again toying with the idea that the Ukrainian president should leave office.

In an appearance before the media in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Trump insisted on the need to reach an “agreement with Russia, and an agreement with Ukraine, that is going to have the approval of the European nations, because that is important.” But in apparent reference, again, to Zelenskiy, he noted, “maybe somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long. That person will not be listened to very long. Because I believe that Russia wants to make a deal. I believe, certainly the people of Ukraine want to make a deal.”

Trump also said that he will announce on Tuesday, in his address to both houses of Congress in a speech equivalent to the State of the Nation, the future of the economic agreement that both presidents had planned to sign on Friday, before the meeting in the Oval Office descended into acrimony. Here he did throw a thread of hope to Kyiv. Asked if he considered the pact dead, he replied: “No, I don’t think so,” and reiterated that the United States needs the minerals it could extract from Ukrainian soil.

The pact provides for joint exploitation of Ukraine’s natural resources, something Washington argues is necessary to recoup the money spent on military aid. The Republican administration also claims that this document will link the two economies, give the United States an incentive to defend Kyiv, and serve as a deterrent for Moscow to avoid a new invasion in the future.

At the same time that the U.S. president is increasing the pressure on Zelenskiy, the White House is considering the possibility of removing some of the sanctions it imposed on Moscow during the war, in a new step in the rapprochement between the two governments and their negotiations for an end to the war in Ukraine, according to Reuters, which cites a senior U.S. official and another person familiar with the matter.

The presidential office, according to the news agency, has asked the State and Treasury departments to draw up a list of sanctions that could be removed. Such a list would be presented to Russian representatives at upcoming meetings between delegations of the two countries to discuss an improvement of diplomatic and economic relations. Since the call between Trump and Putin in mid-February, envoys from both governments have met at least twice. The first, in Riyadh, was led by the heads of the respective diplomacies, Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio. The second took place last week in Turkey.

According to Reuters, the sanctions that the U.S. departments are considering removing include some against various Russian entities and individuals. It is unclear what Washington might get from Moscow in return for such a step. The move comes on top of the Pentagon’s decision, leaked on Sunday and confirmed on Monday, to suspend cyber operations against Russia.

Trump, who promised during the U.S. election campaign to end the war in 24 hours, has adopted much more favorable positions toward Russia in the negotiation process. At no time has he advanced what he plans to demand from Putin, whom he has described as “very intelligent” and “a genius,” while remaining highly critical of Kyiv.

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