Trump Holds Firm on Military Aid to Ukraine
In his call on Tuesday with President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin refused to drop his maximalist objectives, with the Kremlin readout insisting that a lasting settlement would require everything from demilitarization and regime change in Kyiv to the withdrawal of NATO forces from Eastern Europe.
Instead, Putin agreed only to a moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure—a deal that Putin violated within a matter of minutes by bombing the power grid, leaving half of a Ukrainian city without electricity. In other words, he turned down the full ceasefire deal that Trump got Ukraine to agree to a week ago. Putin also publicly joked about the fact that he was late for the call, making Trump wait. Some frame this as disappointing or even embarrassing for Trump. They are dead wrong.
Trump was never going to agree to Putin’s maximalist positions on today’s phone call. Instead, the key concession Putin seriously sought today was for any ceasefire to be conditional upon an immediate cessation of US military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine. This is critical to Putin, whose main goal in a ceasefire is that it leaves Ukraine undefended—so that Russia can rearm and try again to conquer Kyiv within the next couple of years. This would drive the collapse of a US ally that would be even more humiliating than the fall of Kabul under President Joe Biden. That’s why unrestricted Western weaponry is the top redline in any good deal to end the war. The Kremlin readout noted that ending foreign military and intelligence aid to Ukraine will continue to be a condition for any broader ceasefire in the future.
In other words, Trump appears to have refused to acquiesce to Putin’s top demand, which is why today’s ceasefire is so limited. This corresponds to Trump’s rejection of Ukraine’s pleas to include its own top condition—security guarantees—in any ceasefire. But the difference is that Ukraine then conceded to Trump’s ceasefire agreement, whereas Russia refused. Now we all know which side is serious about negotiating a lasting ceasefire, and Ukraine remains free to beat back Russian invaders and thus bolster its negotiating leverage, so long as the United States makes good on its commitment to continue arming the country.
The United States now needs to show that it, too, is serious about its commitment to continue military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the critical minerals deal that Kyiv agreed to last week. This requires more than just permitting the continued shipment of weapons that were purchased in the past and rolling off US assembly lines on an ongoing basis, an important reactivation approved by the US government last week. Now that it is clear that Putin is the obstacle to a full ceasefire, Washington needs to strongly deliver on its end of the bargain with Ukraine by enacting new supplemental Ukraine aid funding. That’s how to translate Trump’s resolve on today’s phone call into the stronger battlefield momentum required to make Putin get serious about these negotiations.