These days, you could forgive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for feeling like an American CEO being whipsawed by President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs. But the Ukrainian president is not trying to maximize profits. He wants to win a war and needs a consistent, predictable flow of American weapons to do that.
He’s not getting it.
Late last month, the administration suspended a promised shipment of much-needed arms to Ukraine, saying the U.S. needed them for its own stockpiles. Then on Monday, following a frustrating call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump flipped that stance, announcing that the U.S. would be sending the weapons after all. But he left ambiguous whether more aid would be forthcoming.
Like their corporate counterparts trying to prepare for tariffs, Zelensky and the Ukrainian military are struggling because they don’t know what U.S. policy will look like. Military planners and former U.S. officials who have worked on weapons deliveries to Ukraine told me that sudden changes create a series of logistical, political, and military challenges that could hamper Ukraine’s grip on its territory as it battles a larger, better-armed foe.
In some ways, the U.S. vacillation has a bigger impact than the lack of the weapons themselves, the officials said. A single shipment of arms—even one that included dozens of Patriot missiles, hundreds of Hellfires, and thousands of rounds of 155-millimeter artillery—does not make or break Ukraine’s war effort.
But uncertainty could: Without a clear picture of the assistance it’s getting from what has been its single most important backer, Ukraine can’t design its war plans or effectively respond to attacks. That’s a perilous situation to be in at a time when Russia is dramatically scaling up the quantity of missiles and drones it’s launching Ukraine’s way.
A senior Ukrainian official compared the halting flow of weapons to a game of roulette and joked that he would be putting his money “on zero.”
“We have to be prepared for the next pause of shipments,” the official told my colleague Shane Harris, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly share his frustrations. Unable to rely on Washington, Ukraine is looking to ramp up joint weapons production with European Union countries and to expand its own national production.
The drama over this particular round of weapons deliveries may have been short-lived, but it’s in keeping with the way Trump has approached Ukraine for years. He was impeached, after all, for withholding military support as he tried to pressure Zelensky into helping dig up dirt on the opponent he feared most in the 2020 election, Joe Biden. After failing to end the war within hours of his inauguration, as he had repeatedly vowed he would, Trump dressed down Zelensky in the Oval Office. The Ukrainian leader has learned the hard way that Trump’s promises come with an asterisk.
Transporting U.S.-provided weapons from Pentagon stockpiles to Poland and then to Ukraine so they can be distributed locally is a huge logistical feat, military planners have repeatedly said, one that takes weeks, if not months, of planning. Once the U.S. announces it is no longer sending a particular system, Ukrainian commanders have to quickly modify their battlefield strategy to find new ways to defend themselves. When Patriot missiles stop arriving from the U.S., for example, Ukraine has to adjust its air defense, “including pulling resources from other operations,” Josh Paul, who worked on U.S. military sales for the State Department during the Biden administration, explained to me.
Those shifts can also mean rushing systems from one part of the country to another or ending the effort to defend a vulnerable area altogether. Because the United States also provides replacement or repair for weapons systems it supplies, a halt in aid may require Ukraine to scramble to find a replacement part from another country or make its own. That all takes time.
The U.S. oscillation comes as Russia has escalated its use of drones, in some cases launching more in a single day of strikes than it did for much of last year. Russia could interpret American indecision as an opening to be more militarily aggressive and “grow hopeful that U.S. security assistance will at some point die on the vine,” Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me.
Such divisions between Ukraine and the U.S also affect the prospects of diplomacy. Why should Russia negotiate if it believes that support for Ukraine is waning? Last week, Trump said that his phone call with Putin “didn’t make any progress” in ending the war. The next day, Russia launched a drone attack on Kyiv that injured at least 14 people.
Trump’s approach to Ukraine mirrors how he has talked about tariffs. He has described the more than $31.7 billion worth of U.S. stockpiles that the U.S. has provided Ukraine, according to a May Government Accountability Office report, as unfair to the U.S., in the same way he has said America has been taken advantage of by its trading partners. In April, the U.S. and Ukraine entered a minerals deal that the administration, in keeping with Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy, has described as “payback” by Kyiv for American support during the war.
Reports that the Pentagon had suspended a shipment of weapons to Ukraine emerged on July 1. Although administration officials initially identified Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, as the one who had advised freezing shipments, defense officials told me that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the decision without consulting the White House. He relied instead on an internal Pentagon review that raised concerns about the state of U.S. air-defense stockpiles. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was coordination across government. But when a reporter asked Trump this week who made the decision to suspend the shipment, he replied: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
It would not be the first time that Hegseth has made such a change. Just weeks into the job, the defense chief ordered a halt to flights carrying munitions and artillery to Ukraine. That also caught the White House by surprise, officials told me. Within days, he lifted the order.
Just after Hegseth’s suspension of arms shipments late last month, Trump had his call with Putin, followed by a call with Zelensky, which the Ukrainian leader described in a social-media post as an “important and fruitful conversation.” By Monday, during a dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump vowed to send weapons to Kyiv: “We have to; they have to be able to defend themselves.”
A Pentagon spokesperson later said that “at President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”
But there is no reason for Ukraine to be optimistic that it will keep receiving U.S. weapons shipments. All weapons that have been provided to Ukraine since Trump took office were approved under President Biden; the delivery of those already approved weapons is expected to run out by the end of the summer. The Trump administration has not asked Congress to fund supplies beyond that. Instead, Ukraine will depend on U.S.-provided funding to build new weapons supplies through contracts with American companies, a years-long process. And although Trump said this week that he would continue to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons, the administration hasn’t provided any details about what kind or how long that will last.
Ukraine has successfully produced drones and can get some weapons systems from its European allies. But other weapons, particularly those such as Patriot missiles, used to defend Kyiv and to target Russian military assets, only the U.S. can provide. Even if Ukraine agrees to buy them, getting them to the battlefield could take years.
The best Zelensky can do now is hope that whatever the ups and downs of recent weeks, the latest change of heart by the U.S. portends more support in the future.
“We now have the necessary political statements and decisions” from the U.S., Zelensky said in a social-media post Tuesday. Now, he added, “we must implement them as quickly as possible to protect our people and our positions.”
Shane Harris contributed reporting to this story.
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