CNN
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President Donald Trump is ordering a pause on shipments of US military aid to Ukraine after his heated Oval Office argument with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week, a White House official told CNN Monday.
The halt in aid, which came after Trump held a series of meetings with top national security officials at the White House, could have dire effect on Ukraine’s war-fighting abilities, officials and analysts said. It will remain in place until Trump determines Zelensky has made a commitment to seeking peace talks, one official said, essentially forcing Ukraine to a negotiating table by threatening further losses on the battlefield.
“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 White House official said.
After more than a week of open hostility between Washington and Kyiv, Monday’s pause was the most material sign of how far the relationship has deteriorated since Trump took office.
In recent weeks, Trump has echoed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points, falsely claiming Ukraine started the war and accusing Zelensky of being a dictator, but his decision to halt the delivery of military aid is a move that could have real consequences for the balance of the conflict and strengthen Putin’s hand.
The pause will apply to all military equipment not yet inside Ukraine, officials said, and amounts to a direct response to what Trump views as Zelensky’s bad behavior last week.
Ukraine could likely sustain its current fighting pace for several weeks — perhaps until the start of the summer — before a US pause would begin to have a major effect, Western officials said in the wake of the decision. The Biden administration rushed shipments of weapons to Ukraine in its waning days, providing the country with large stockpiles of advanced weapons.
It is those sophisticated weapons — including the long-range ATACMS missiles — that have allowed Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, a strategy that could suffer if those weapons remain paused.
While European nations may be able to replace US shipments of artillery, supplemented by Ukraine’s own growing defense industry, the most advanced weapons used by Kyiv come from the United States.
“The impact is going to be big. I would call it crippling,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has closely followed the war.
Cancian estimated that Ukraine would feel the impacts of the pause in aid within two to four months, as aid from European countries helps Kyiv remain in the fight for now. “That’s why they don’t fall off a cliff, but when your supplies get cut in half, eventually that shows up on the front lines,” Cancian said. “Their front lines would continue to buckle and eventually they would break and Ukraine would have to accept an adverse – even catastrophic – peace settlement.”
But Cancian warned the Trump administration has more forms of aid to Ukraine that can be paused or canceled altogether, including intelligence sharing and the training of Ukrainian forces. “There might be a way out of this, but it’s going to be extremely humiliating for Zelensky,” Cancian said.
The White House made the decision to pause military aid to Ukraine for now as officials seek an acknowledgement from Zelensky about the breakdown in relations following Friday’s blowup in the Oval Office.
According to several officials, Trump and his senior aides are seeking an acknowledgement from Zelensky – potentially in the form of a public apology – before moving ahead with a deal on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which had been close to agreement before Friday’s meeting, or a discussion on continuing foreign aid. The decision to halt the aid was made later on Monday, one person said, and is part of a pressure strategy on Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly called for Zelensky to apologize for Friday in an interview on CNN.
The halt puts Trump even more clearly at odds with the United States’ traditional European allies like Britain and France, who made clear their support for Zelensky at a summit in London on Sunday.
“There is a capability gap that Europe cannot fill alone,” one US official said.
A European official called the Trump administration’s decision to pause military aid to Ukraine “petty and wrong.”
The official said it will immediately deepen distrust in the US government among the Ukrainian people. The official also predicted it will cause unnecessary civilian casualties, as Ukraine will not be able to defend against Russian air attacks after they run out of air defense missiles.
“I’m beyond disappointed,” the official told CNN
Since the start of the war, the Biden administration announced 74 separate packages of military aid pulled directly from US inventories, allowing the critical munitions and supplies to flow quickly to Ukraine. The largest of these packages was nearly $3 billion, though most were far smaller. Zelensky has repeatedly thanked the US for the weapons on social media, as well as in calls and meetings with American officials.
The pause comes one day after a defense official told CNN that military aid to Ukraine announced by the Biden administration was still flowing. Those shipments included critical munitions such as anti-tank weapons, thousands of artillery rounds, and rockets. Those shipments were expected to continue for several weeks, but the decision from the Trump administration freezes the aid that was en route.
“DoD is also providing other capabilities, such as armored vehicles, as soon as required repairs are completed,” the defense official said on Sunday. The US had set up facilities in Poland to repair Western equipment damaged on the battlefield before sending it back to the Ukrainian military.
There are also multiple longer-term contracts between arms manufacturers and the US to send weapons systems and air defense systems to Ukraine.
Republicans in Congress, where the party holds majorities in both chambers, have been split on continuing aid to Ukraine amid its three-year war with Russia.
Earlier Monday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Trump ally, said he thought the US obligation to Ukraine only goes “so far,” saying, “the American taxpayers are tired of funding this war, and there’s no end in sight.”
“I don’t believe that any of us sitting here believes that Ukraine can win this war, and the president is saying, ‘Let’s bring an end to it,’” the Oklahoma Republican continued, adding that if Zelensky wants the US to continue negotiating peace, “then we will.”
However, he warned if Zelensky “doesn’t want to negotiate peace, then it’s not our job to make the taxpayers continue to fund an endless war.”
GOP Sen. Susan Collins, however, denounced the pause on Monday night, arguing that the US needs to continue backing its ally.
“This is a critical time for Ukraine. And I managed the Ukraine supplemental last year that provided additional help to Ukraine, and I do not think we should be pausing our efforts. It’s the Ukrainians who are shedding blood,” the Maine Republican said.
Collins acknowledged that Congress may not be able to do anything to ensure Ukraine continues to receive aid from the US.
“A lot of it is linked to the president’s drawdown authority,” she noted, pointing to accusations during former President Joe Biden’s term that he had “slow walked” aid.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before, and I remain convinced that it’s not only in Ukraine’s interest but our interest to back Ukraine because Putin is not going to stop there,” she said.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Republican Rep. Brian Mast told CNN he “knew it was an option” for the Trump administration to pause all US military aid to Ukraine.
“I think people can assume that everything is on the table with Ukraine right now,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Morgan Rimmer, Annie Grayer, Ali Main, Manu Raju and Sarah Davis contributed to this report.
