Key Points and Summary – In a stunning policy reversal, President Donald Trump has announced a plan to “dramatically increase” weapons shipments to Ukraine, just days after a controversial pause on aid.
-Citing frustration with Vladimir Putin’s refusal to negotiate in good faith, Trump is now backing a deal where NATO allies will purchase and transfer US arms, including offensive weapons, to Kyiv.
-This new hardline stance is coupled with a 50-day ultimatum for Russia to make peace or face 100% secondary tariffs on its trading partners, marking a significant and unpredictable escalation in the U.S. approach to the war.
What Will Russia Do Now That Trump Has Changed Course?
On Monday, President Donald Trump, alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, announced that the U.S. will make new offensive weapons available to Ukraine, through NATO members, while also announcing a 50-day deadline, at which point new tariffs will be placed on countries that trade with Russia, should Russia not agree to make peace with Ukraine.
The plan had been floated last month during the NATO meeting.
The move represents a shift for an administration that came into office promising to end the war immediately, while seeming to put more pressure on Ukraine until relatively recently. The Pentagon had even announced a pause on deliveries of weapons to Ukraine last month, although the pause was quickly reversed.
“We’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days,” Trump said at the White House event. “Tariffs at about 100%, you’d call them secondary tariffs. You know what that means.”
The White House, per CNN, later qualified that the “secondary tariffs” threat was aimed at countries that buy oil from Russia, as, due to sanctions in place since Ukraine launched the war, the U.S. does not do much trade anymore with Russia.
“I use trade for a lot of things,” Trump said at the event. “But it’s great for settling wars.”
The weapons provided to Ukraine will include Patriot missile batteries, as well as other weapons that Ukraine had been seeking from its Western allies.
Per CNN, Trump has multiple motivations for that specific action.
“By selling weapons to European nations, rather than transferring them to Ukraine itself, Trump hopes to insulate himself from political criticism that he is reversing a campaign pledge to reduce the US role in the years-long war,” CNN said of the deal.
“He is also expecting a financial windfall: Each Patriot missile system costs roughly $1 billion, and he has already touted the profits for the US as part of the scheme.”
It will also, the report said, be easier if the weapons, coming from European countries, are already in Europe.
Trump and Putin
The move represents a rare break between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as the U.S. president expressed clear frustration with Putin’s lack of response to his overtures to end the war.
“My conversations with him are very pleasant, and then the missiles go off at night,” Trump said at the White House of his pressure on the Russian leader. “He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden — he didn’t fool me.”
“He’s seriously frustrated with Putin,” one US official told CNN. “He wants to show he’s serious about ending the war, and maybe this will show Putin it’s time to start negotiating.”
What Will Russia Do Next?
The question is whether Russia will remain defiant or return to the negotiation table, following the move by the U.S. and NATO.
CNN, in a separate analysis late last week, looked at the question of what will happen now.
“Putin made clear before the invasion that he sees the conflict as righting a historic wrong — both over Russia’s age-old claims to Ukraine and his wider grievances that date back to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which he watched with dismay from his post as a KGB lieutenant colonel in communist East Germany. Putin talks of the “root causes” of the war,” Stephen Collinson wrote for CNN.
“This is code for a number of Russian grievances that include the existence of a democratic government in Kyiv. It sometimes refers to Moscow’s claims that it is threatened by NATO expansion after the Cold War and to its desire to see alliance troops withdrawn from former communist states once in the Soviet Union’s orbit, such as Poland and Romania.”
Collinson added that following a recent meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, there were indications that “US hopes of engaging Russia on the war are not dead.”
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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