Editor’s note: This article was updated on July 8, 2025, to reflect the Trump administration’s announcement that it would resume sending weapons to Ukraine.
This is part of a series of regular assessments of the efforts, spearheaded by the Trump administration, to achieve a negotiated end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Read the previous edition here.
When it comes to the past week’s biggest story concerning Russia’s war on Ukraine, the facts are clear. The Trump administration decided to “pause” the delivery of military equipment to Ukraine that Congress approved in the spring of 2024. Then on Monday night, the administration announced that the weapons shipments would resume. But the meaning of these developments is less clear. A closer look at what did—and didn’t—happen provides important insight as to how the Trump administration’s policy toward Russian aggression in Ukraine may develop in the coming months.
The list of halted weapons reportedly included interceptors for Patriot air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, and missiles that the Ukrainian air force fires from American-made F-16 jets. On July 1, Politico reported that US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby drove the decision, which was made after a review of diminishing Pentagon arms stockpiles.
This appeared to be a significant movement of administration policy, taking it in a much different direction from where it had been just a week earlier. At the June 24-25 NATO Summit in The Hague, the United States joined the allies in decisions to greatly increase defense and defense-related expenditures to 5 percent of gross domestic product in ten years to meet the Russian threat. The allies also allowed defense aid to Ukraine to count as part of these expenditures. What’s more, at a press conference in The Hague, US President Donald Trump expressed his intention to help Ukraine obtain more air defense systems, including Patriot batteries and interceptor missiles.
Voice of Ukraine 