U.S. Halts Military Aid to Ukraine After Oval Office Spat

The U.S. has halted military aid to Ukraine, the White House announced on Monday evening, following Friday’s fiery Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. Few details have been made public as of yet, but the decision to suspend military aid to Ukraine brings to a halt a major source of hardware and ammunition for the Ukrainian Armed Forces amid heavy fighting with Russia along the frontlines. 

“President Trump has been clear that he is focused on peace,” a White House official told Reuters and other U.S. media outlets, explaining the freeze. “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.” 

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the U.S. has provided dozens of aid packages, sending large quantities of air-defense launchers and missiles, howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, artillery ammunition, armored personnel carriers, drones, and counter-drone equipment to the Ukrainian military. According to the U.S. State Department, in total, the U.S. has delivered $66.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the war’s start. Deliveries continued after the change of U.S. administration in January — with a brief blip in early February — but the Trump administration has not announced any further deliveries of equipment, and now appears certain to put an end to the U.S. support altogether. 

Kyiv’s first reaction to the freeze came from Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who asserted on Tuesday that Ukraine’s troops have the capability “to maintain the situation on the frontline.” Addressing U.S.-Ukrainian relations, Shmyhal said Ukraine would continue to work with Washington “through all available channels in a calm manner.”

Assuming the freeze is sustained, Ukraine’s inventory of U.S.-supplied equipment will likely run out within 2-3 months, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official told the Financial Times. Once those supplies are exhausted, “It will not be a total collapse, but we will be forced to withdraw from areas more quickly,” the official said. Lawmaker Oleksandr Merezhko, however, warned that the impact of the freeze will already be felt “in the coming days.” 

The Russian military has in particular made an effort to advance west of Donetsk since summer 2024, hoping to capture the Ukrainian logistics hub Pokrovsk and now contesting control of Toretsk. Russia has moreover deployed North Korean troops alongside its own as part of a counteroffensive against Ukrainian positions in Kursk, a Russian province partially under Ukraine’s control following a Ukrainian offensive into the border province last year. While the Ukrainian offensive failed to divert Russia’s focus away from Donetsk, Ukraine still holds a salient into Russian territory that offers Kyiv some leverage in negotiating with Moscow. 

These lines become more challenging for Ukraine to hold in absence of U.S. aid. The number of Russian ground operations along the front lines have actually declined over the first few months of 2025 compared to the tempo of the second half of 2024, but Russia may have been using the space to rebuild its forces ahead of renewed offensives later in the year. A Ukrainian Border Guard official warned on Monday that Russian troops are attempting a breakthrough in Sumy, aiming to cut off Ukraine’s Kursk salient. Russia moreover continues to exceed its military recruitment targets, and help from Pyongyang has ramped up as Kyiv’s foreign support has faltered.

“You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards,” President Trump told Zelensky during the latter’s visit to the White House on Friday. 

Hoping to make good on his campaign pledge to end the war ‘quickly’, President Trump has engaged in simultaneous talks with Russia about the war – and U.S.-Russian relations more generally – and with Ukraine about a deal covering the development of Ukrainian mineral and other natural resources. In February, Ukraine rejected an initial draft of the mineral deal, over complaints that the U.S. proposal offered no security guarantees to Ukraine. Zelensky traveled to Washington last week to discuss signing a new version of the deal, but ultimately those negotiations collapsed into a shouting match in the Oval Office involving the two presidents and Vice President J.D. Vance. 

The clash in the White House and resulting military aid freeze puts a spotlight on Ukraine’s partners in Europe, who have themselves scrambled to react to a series of foreign policy shifts from the White House, particularly the Trump administration’s reconciliation effort with the Kremlin. Both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made separate trips to the U.S. in the last week, to urge Trump to continue U.S. support for Kyiv. 

European leaders are now looking at the prospect of going it alone in assisting Ukraine. While the U.S. is the largest individual provider of military aid to Ukraine, the E.U. has sent around EUR53 billion ($55.7 billion) in military hardware and related support to the embattled country since 2022, and London has provided another GBP7.8 billion ($9.9 billion). European countries have also provided funding to the Ukrainian defense industry to enable Ukrainian companies to supply drones and howitzers to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

Alarmed at the declining relations between Washington and Kyiv, individual European governments have announced a number of new military aid packages since the change of administration in the U.S. in January, looking to bolster Ukraine’s position. But coordinating efforts at a multilateral level has proved challenging. Late in February, reports emerged that the E.U. was putting together a multi-billion euro tranche of defense aid to Ukraine. That proposal, however, fell apart over objections from Hungary, POLITICO reported. 

It will thus prove challenging for Europe to fill the void left by the U.S., putting pressure on Ukraine’s government to take the Trump administration’s mineral deal despite its reservations. On Tuesday, after the aid freeze was announced, President Zelensky wrote on his X social media page, “Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.” Left in a jam, Kyiv has few good alternatives.