Trump ends military aid to Ukraine; EU calls for $840B military boost

(CN) — In a bid to force Kyiv to sue for peace with Moscow, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday stopped the delivery of military supplies to Ukraine, a decision that threatened to leave the war-ravaged country badly vulnerable to Russia’s attacks.

Meanwhile, the European Union solidified its role as Ukraine’s chief ally with its chief executive announcing an ambitious proposal to boost military spending across the bloc by more than $840 billion.

EU leaders will discuss its historic rearmament plans at a summit Thursday focused on Ukraine and the threat from Russia. In recent days, European leaders have vowed to step up their support for Ukraine in defiance of Trump’s efforts to bully Kyiv into accepting a peace deal that would likely favor Russia, a disastrous outcome in the view of many European leaders.

Washington’s decision to halt military supplies to Ukraine emerged over the course of Tuesday in Europe through news reports. Anonymous White House officials said it was a “pause” in the shipment of missiles, ammunition, vehicles and other equipment. However, the U.S. reportedly had not stopped providing Ukraine with battlefield intelligence.

At a news briefing late Monday, Trump continued to castigate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as ungrateful for the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid his country received and an impediment to ending the conflict, which is one of Trump’s chief priorities. The shutoff of aid comes in the wake of a falling out between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday during a televised meeting in the Oval Office.

“I just think you should be more appreciative because this country has stuck with them through thick and thin,” Trump said.

Speaking on Fox News, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Trump set “a very clear goal” to “stop the killing” by getting Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin “to the negotiating table.”

“And that’s ultimately where things broke apart,” Vance said. “I think Zelenskyy wasn’t yet there, and I think, frankly, now still isn’t there, but I think we’ll get there eventually. He has to.”

In Ukraine, the halt in American weapons was met with a mixture of despair and defiance. Ukraine has relied heavily on American weapons and intelligence to hold the front lines and go on the attack against Russian forces.

Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, called it “a disastrous decision” that benefited Putin.

“Especially right now when we are in desperate need of American weaponry, American support,” he told BBC.

He said it appeared Trump wanted to compel Ukraine to capitulate. “It looks like siding with Russia,” he said.

With the prospect of running out of air defense missiles, he warned Ukraine would not be able to protect Kyiv and other cities from Russian bombardment.

“I’m appealing to Mr. Trump not to play with these dangerous issues because we’re talking about lives,” he said.

Zelenskyy also faced criticism for rejecting Trump’s proposals, which included signing a minerals deal that would give the U.S. a major stake in the country’s natural resources. Zelenskyy rejected the deal because Trump refused to include American security guarantees in the deal.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian in an opposition party, urged Zelenskyy to reconcile with Trump.

“We are completely dependent on the U.S. and we need to play with Trump, not against him,” he said on social media. “We already have enough enemies, let’s at least not lose our friends.”

On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said he wanted to patch up his relationship with Trump.

“Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right,” Zelenksyy wrote on social media. “We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.”

Zelenskyy also said he was ready to enter peace negotiations and offered to release Russian prisoners of war, stop long-range drone and missile strikes aimed at Russian targets and declare a truce at sea immediately.

“Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer,” he added. “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

But there are doubts about whether Ukraine would be better off agreeing to Trump’s demands and making concessions to Russia without receiving assurances of U.S. and NATO protection from future Russian attacks.

“It could have gone very bad for Ukraine had it accepted the deal that Trump was pushing,” said Eugene Finkel, a Ukrainian-born political scientist at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

“There is zero trust in Putin because he violated all the existing ceasefires and agreements,” Finkel said. “So, for [Ukraine], some sort of security guarantees are a must.”

Since the clash in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy has enjoyed a wave of support inside Ukraine for standing up to Trump, Finkel said. He said many Ukrainians feel betrayed by Trump.

“The perception is that’s what he should have done,” Finkel said, speaking by telephone. “That’s part of the Ukrainian national character, this kind of defiance.”

He said Trump was seen as “bullying and humiliating Ukraine” and “trying to strong-arm Ukraine” into a deal.

“We’re not going to put up with that, no matter the cost,” he said. “It’s not a nation that will go down quietly. They’re used to fighting and they’re used to standing up to bullies and dictators and that’s kind of the perception of Trump that they have.”

While a cutoff of American supplies is a blow to Ukraine, he said Ukrainian forces are not expected to collapse.

“Ukraine obviously relies heavily on U.S. weapons, but the sense I’m getting is that it can survive, at least for some time, without the U.S.A,” he said.

Ukraine, he said, has managed to stabilize the front lines and even go on the offensive in places, most significantly with an incursion into Kursk, a region of Russia. Meanwhile, he said Russia’s push to seize more of eastern Ukraine appears to have petered out.

“Essentially, the front lines are pretty stable, a kilometer here and a kilometer there,” he said.

While Ukraine remains in a precarious position, he said it can expect to receive military aid from European allies. Also, he noted Ukraine has begun producing its own weapons. Ukraine relies heavily on drone warfare and it churns out scores of them, according to Ukrainian officials.

Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general at the Royal United Services Institute, a British military think tank, said in a briefing note that Ukraine should be able to carry on fighting without U.S. aid.

“Ukraine will not collapse — they already experienced an aid cutoff last year, but the effect will be cumulative,” he said, referring to a period when Republicans in Congress stopped former U.S. President Joe Biden from passing a major military aid package for Ukraine.

Chalmers said recent estimates found 20% of military hardware supplied to Ukrainian forces comes from the U.S. while 55% is home-produced in Ukraine and 25% comes from Europe and the rest of the world. But he said the U.S. military supplies were “the most lethal and important.”

Finkel said he was hopeful Europe would maintain its strong support for Ukraine.

“The supporters of Ukraine are also mobilizing to a degree that I haven’t seen in a very long time,” he said. He added that Ukrainians were displaying levels of energy not seen since the country gained its independence in 1992.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau