Trump cuts Ukraine off

The US president has halted military aid to Volodymyr Zelensky’s war-torn country, effective immediately.

In March 2022, with Vladimir Putin’s full-scale assault on Ukraine underway and a column of Russian tanks and military hardware bearing down on Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the US congress from a bunker beneath the presidential administration. Wearing khaki military fatigues and refusing to abandon his post, despite the Russian assassination squads then closing in on the Ukrainian capital, Zelensky received a standing ovation from Republicans and Democrat, many of whom wiped away tears, as he thanked the United States for its help defending Ukraine and the democratic values it represents. “We’re fighting for the values of Europe,” Zelensky said.

Three years later, Ukraine is still fighting – having defied the early predictions that it would be defeated within a matter of weeks – but when Zelensky travelled to Washington in late February, he was ridiculed for his military clothing and berated by Donald Trump and JD Vance, during their now infamous encounter in the Oval Office. In the days since, Trump and his senior officials have insisted that Zelensky needs to apologise for apparently failing to prostrate himself before them and having the nerve to try to insert some facts into the discussion of Russia’s war on his country. “I just think he should be more appreciative,” Trump said of Zelensky on 3 March. Hours later, his administration announced a halt to US military aid to Ukraine with immediate effect.

“[Donald Trump] has been clear that he is focused on peace,” a White House official told reporters by way of explanation. “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 goal here is to end a war that is costing the lives of thousands of people, destroying a country,” wrote US secretary of state Marco Rubio in a post on X, because that seems to be how Washington now conducts diplomacy. “Every day that goes by the cost of rebuilding Ukraine gets higher and higher and higher.” He insisted that Trump was “the only leader in the world that could actually get Putin to agree to a peace”.

This is the opposite of what Trump’s actions are likely to achieve. By repeatedly attacking Zelensky – whom he has called a “dictator”, accused of starting the war with Russia, and depicted as the main impediment to peace – Trump is only strengthening Putin’s hand. He is making it less likely that the Russian leader will feel the need to offer concessions in any negotiations that follow, let alone agree to the kind of terms that might yield a durable peace, such as the presence of a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. (If Trump had actually listened to Zelensky instead of yelling at him in the Oval Office, then he might have understood that Putin has broken every peace agreement he has signed with Ukraine so far.)

Instead of demonstrating Western strength and unity, Trump is openly broadcasting his contempt for the Ukrainian leader and disregard for Europe. Putin, whose own domestic problems are mounting with high inflation and surging casualties, must be thrilled. Why would he feel any need to negotiate when his enemies are turning on each other and apparently intent on weakening themselves?

On the contrary, Putin may well now assess that his initial war aims are achievable – regime change in Kyiv, where he hopes to replace Zelensky with a compliant president, the subjugation of Ukraine, and the fundamental revision of Europe’s security architecture. In the short term, he will be encouraged to try to take more Ukrainian territory. Regardless of how long the US military aid freeze lasts, Ukrainian frontline commanders will once again have to ration their ammunition (as they did when the last US aid package was held up in congress in late 2023) and budget for continued uncertainty. Russia will be emboldened to press ahead with its objective of taking control of the entire region of Donetsk, and then why not push on towards the industrial hub of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia? Trump’s decision to turn on Ukraine and its president so publicly will only stoke Putin’s confidence.

At the same time, Trump has empowered Elon Musk to take his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) wrecking ball to the US government, while the defence secretary Pete Hegseth announces cuts to US military spending and a halt to US offensive cyber operations against Russia. Then there is Vice President Vance’s attack on European allies in Munich in February and the trade war Trump has unleashed against America’s biggest trading partners, with 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, along with 20 per cent tariffs on China going into effect on 4 March. As Trump railed against the supposed injustices of global trade on Fox News and insisted the planned tariffs would go ahead on 3 March, a ticker at the bottom of the screen showed the stock market plunging in real time as the S&P 500 recorded its biggest fall of the year. Brad Setser, a former economist at the US treasury, now at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, called it, “one of the most self-destructive economic policy steps in recent history.”

It is not just Keir Starmer who believes we have arrived at a “crossroads in history”. In Moscow, too, and no doubt Beijing, there is a palpable sense that the world order is in flux and the “great changes” Putin and Xi have long sought, are finally underway. “The collective west has partially ceased to be collective, and the fragmentation of the collective west has begun,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the fallout from Zelensky’s meeting with Trump and the apparent schism between the US and Europe. The urgent question now is whether – and how quickly – Kyiv’s European allies can step up to fill the void left by the US, and how much damage Ukraine will suffer in the meantime. It is unclear, for instance, if the cessation of US aid will extend to intelligence and targeting co-operation, and access to Musk’s Starlink internet service, which has been vital to Ukrainian military operations.

Three years into this war, this is not the first time Ukraine has faced seemingly insurmountable odds. Yet it would have been hard to believe at the outset, when Volodymyr Zelensky was being feted as a hero by the US congress and the Churchill of our times, that his greatest challenge might end up coming from his closest ally.