Trump pauses US military aid to Ukraine after Zelensky row

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Monday directed a “pause” to United States assistance to Ukraine as he seeks to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to engage in negotiations to end the war with Russia.

The move comes just days after a disastrous Oval Office meeting in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance tore into Zelensky for what they perceived as insufficient gratitude for the more than $180 billion in military aid the US has sent to Kyiv since Russia invaded three years ago.

The halting of military aid comes some five years after Trump held up congressionally authorized assistance to Ukraine as he sought to pressure Zelensky to launch an investigation into Joe Biden, then a Democratic presidential candidate. The moment led to Trump’s first impeachment.

During the 2024 election campaign, Trump vowed a quick end to the war in Ukraine, even once boasting that he could bring a halt to the fighting in one day.

He has shown increasing frustration with Zelensky over the war while simultaneously expressing confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has long admired, can be trusted to keep the peace if a truce is reached.

Trump earlier on Monday slammed Zelensky for suggesting that the end of the war likely “is still very, very far away.” Zelensky had suggested it would take time to come to an agreement to end the war as he tried to offer a positive take on the US-Ukraine relationship in the aftermath of last week’s White House meeting.

“This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform, responding to comments Zelensky made late Sunday to reporters.

Trump, at a White House event later Monday, referred to Zelensky’s reported comments and asserted the Ukrainian leader “better not be right about that.”

Zelensky later took to social media and underscored without directly referring to Trump’s comments that it “is very important that we try to make our diplomacy really substantive to end this war the soonest possible.”

“We need real peace and Ukrainians want it most because the war ruins our cities and towns,” Zelensky added. “We lose our people. We need to stop the war and to guarantee security.”

Trump administration and Ukrainian officials had been expected to sign off on a deal during Zelensky’s visit last week that would have given the US access to Ukraine’s critical minerals in part to pay back the US for aid it has sent Kyiv since the start of the war. The White House had billed such a pact as a way to tighten US-Ukrainian relations in the long term.

The Biden administration provided Kyiv with more than $66.5 billion in military aid and weapons since the war began. It had left unspent about $3.85 billion in congressionally authorised funding to send more weapons to Ukraine from existing US stockpiles — a sum that had not been affected by the foreign aid freeze that Trump put in place when he first took office.