Halted military aid for Ukraine may start flowing again

Halted shipments of some American military aid to Ukraine could resume after a series of high-level meetings in Italy and Ukraine over the coming week, according to two people familiar with the planning.

These meetings could be the key to resuming some of the aid, which POLITICO first reported were paused earlier this month.

President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg will meet with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov in Rome at an international aid conference followed by a meeting in Kyiv this week and next, with the issue of aid sure to be at the top of the agenda. The Ukrainian government sees the resumption of air defense and precision munitions as critical to its war effort, as Russia has hit civilian targets hard in some of the largest drone and missile strikes of the war over the last two weeks.

The U.S. has indicated to Kyiv that deliveries of engineering equipment and some armored vehicles will resume soon, though no timeline has been given yet, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to share details of ongoing discussions.

Speaking to reporters on Monday night, Trump confirmed that more aid would be sent to Ukraine but did not offer specifics. “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now … We have to send more weapons, defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess.”

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

The Kyiv meeting between Kellogg and Umerov was not originally intended to address U.S. military aid, and was “set up before news of the arms pause came to light last week,” Kellogg spokesperson Morgan Murphy said in response to a request for comment about the meetings.

The Pentagon’s abrupt halt of missile defense and precision-guided munitions for Ukraine last week came as a shock to Ukraine and caught many lawmakers and Trump allies off guard. It also raised new questions among U.S. allies across the Atlantic about whether America was more broadly stepping back from military support for Kyiv.

The munitions pause appeared counter to comments Trump made last month after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in The Hague, where he indicated he was willing to step up the shipment of air defense systems to Ukraine.

“They do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them, and we’re going to see if we can make some available,” Trump said. “They’re very hard to get.”

Trump discussed the aid pause on a call Friday with Zelenskyy, and also addressed a potential ceasefire agreement with Russia. The Ukrainian president said it was “probably the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive.”

That call came a day after Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a conversation the president indicated did not go well.

He was “very unhappy” with the Putin call, he told reporters over the weekend. “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it.”

In contrast, he indicated that the call with Zelenskyy was more productive, and suggested that more weapons could soon be on the way. When asked about supplying more Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine — which were stopped under orders from the Pentagon — Trump replied, “Yeah, we might … they’re going to need something because they’re being hit pretty hard.”

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the aid stoppage wasn’t permanent, portraying it as “a pause, to review, to ensure that everything the Pentagon is pushing out there is in the best interests of our military and our men and women in uniform.”

Some of the weapons denied to Ukraine included 8,400 155mm artillery rounds, 142 Hellfire missiles, and 252 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles, which can precisely hit targets up to 50 miles away.

Most significantly, the halted shipment also included 30 Patriot missiles used for shooting down Russian missiles and drones, which have been pounding apartment buildings and other civilian infrastructure in Kyiv.

“The air defense munitions — the Patriots — are obviously the big one because Russia is producing so many UAVs that are becoming harder to hit with Ukraine’s mobile air defenses,” said Rob Lee, who studies the Russia-Ukraine war for the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Russia is actually targeting the defense industry, and sometimes they have success and they destroy factories, so providing air defense systems is important because it also helps Ukraine produce its own munitions so it can sustain the fight itself,” Lee added.

The stepped-up Russian attacks killed at least 11 civilians and injured more than 80 others, including children, Ukrainian officials said Monday. Over the past week, Russia launched at least 1,270 drones, 39 missiles and 1,000 glide bombs at different areas of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said Monday.

Eli Stokols and Megan Messerly contributed reporting.