Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that Ukraine has only received $75bn from a pledged $177bn of aid pledged by the US to support Ukraine last year and he doesn’t know where the missing $100bn money is, he said in an interview with The Associated Press on February 1.
That follows reports that the US briefly stopped shipping weapons to Ukraine following President Donald Trump’s inauguration as the new White House administration debated its policies of supporting Ukraine with arms shipments, Reuters reported on February 3, citing four sources familiar with the matter.
Opposing factions within the administration had a heated debate on continuing supplies to Ukraine, but those advocating deliveries should continue for the meantime eventually won the argument, a US official told Reuters.
Trump vowed to end the war on his first day in office but has since extended the deadline to the first 100 days of his current term, but has made it clear that he wants to withdraw US support from the conflict.
That support has already been dwindling. Earlier Zelenskiy said that half of the $61bn aid package approved on April 20 last year, after the US ran out of money for Ukraine, has been caught up in bi-partisan wrangling and has not reached Kyiv. At the same time the US stopped supplying Ukraine with weapons from its own stockpile last year and all the arms and ammo delivered to Ukraine in 2024 came from European stockpiles – including the much vaunted F-16 jet fighters. What arms the US has pledged to provide have been ordered from US arms manufacturers rather than drawn from existing stockpiles.
Trump froze all of the US foreign aid programmes for 90 days after taking power; however, Ukrainian officials claim that arms deliveries for Ukraine were exempted. However, Trump has shut down all of the aid agency USAID activity, which has been playing a crucial role in providing Ukraine with temporary generating capacity to get through the winter after Russia destroyed half of Ukraine’s heating and generating capacity in 2024.
US President Donald Trump claimed that “serious progress” has been made toward settling the Ukrainian crisis. "We've made a lot of progress on Russia, Ukraine," he told journalists but did not explain what he actually meant. "We'll see what happens. But a lot of progress has been made. We've got to stop that ridiculous war," he added during a visit to the Andrews Air Force Base near the American capital at the weekend.
The Kremlin has said in recent weeks that it is prepared to start talks with the US, but has refused to include Ukraine in the offer, arguing that Zelenskiy is not the legitimate president of Ukraine after his term in office expired last May. Moreover, Putin repeatedly pointed out that Zelenskiy has banned himself from negotiating with the Russian president directly by decree.
The White House has also called for presidential elections to be held in Ukraine as soon as ceasefire is agreed. Zelenskiy would likely lose those elections, as his standing in the polls has been falling, while those of former commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi have been rising; the latter would likely win if elections were held this weekend.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that it was “too early” to consider four-way talks between Russia, the US, Ukraine and the EU that have been proposed by some.
Zelenskiy told AP that excluding his country from talks between the US and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous” and asked for more discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a plan for a ceasefire. Zelenskiy remains convinced that the Kremlin does not want to engage in ceasefire talks or to discuss any kind of concessions at the moment and is only playing for time. But he said that Trump could force Putin to the table by further tightening oil and banking sanctions.
He repeated his opinion that Nato membership is the “cheapest” option for Ukraine’s allies, and it would strengthen Trump geopolitically. Without security deals from Ukraine’s allies, Zelenskiy said, any deal struck with Russia would only serve as a precursor to future aggression.
Trump has been lukewarm on Nato and has even threatened to withdraw from the military alliance unless other Nato partners increase their defence spending to at least 5% of GDP.
Zelenskiy also said a French proposal to supply European peacekeepers to oversee a ceasefire is taking shape, but he added that many questions remained about the command-and-control structure. The Kremlin has said it is categorically against any Nato troop presence in Ukraine on any terms.
Zelenskiy said his team has been in contact with the Trump administration, but those discussions are at a “general level,” and he believes in-person meetings will take place soon to develop more detailed agreements, AP reported.
The business of peace
One of the impediments holding up US supplies is the White House is linking continued supplies to business deals. Trump told reporters on February 3 that the US wants to strike a deal with Kyiv where aid is offered in exchange for access to Ukraine’s extensive deposits of crucial rare earth elements. As bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine needs to present the deal-loving Trump a quid pro quo to ensure further support and has 20 out of the 31 mineral resources identified as critical to the EU, including the largest deposits of lithium in Europe.
As Senator Linsey Graham, an ardent Ukraine supporter, said at the end of last year: “This war is all about money and Ukraine has $2-$7 trillion worth of rare earth minerals.”
A deal on rare earth concessions was on the table in December, but US officials delayed finalising the agreement until January so that Trump could take the credit once it was closed, The New York Times (NYT) reports.
"We're telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earth metals. We want them to pledge them as security. We want security because we're giving them money by the handful," Trump said while signing the executive orders, including those establishing a sovereign wealth fund. "So we're trying to make a deal with Ukraine where they'll secure what we're giving them with their rare earth metals and other things.”
Separately, it has been reported that some US senators want to link further aid to Kyiv lowering the conscription age to 18 to provide fresh troops to the battle, something that Zelenskiy has fiercely resisted in anticipation of a strong political backlash, and the ominous consequences it would have for Ukraine’s demographics, already the worst demographics in the world.
The mercantile Trump is hoping to continue to make a profit from the war. US arms exports reach a record $318bn in 2024 driven by Ukraine-related demand. The State Department described arms sales and transfers as "important US foreign policy tools with potential long-term implications for regional and global security." Washington openly admits that some 80% of the military aid provided to Ukraine has actually been spent in US arms factories, giving the US economy a military spending economic bump.
At the same time, the US has gleefully stepped into the hole following the end of Russian gas deliveries to Europe thanks to the war. At a stroke US LNG exports have captured about a third of Europe’s gas demand, a market share formerly dominated by cheap Russian piped gas.
Trump intends to follow through and expand this lucrative business. The Trump administration aims to push Russian LNG out of Europe and completely end Russian deliveries of LNG to Europe, the Financial Times reports. Despite calls by some EU member states to end imports of Russian gas, Europe imported more piped gas and LNG than ever in 2024 as even with US deliveries there is insufficient supplies of gas available for Europe to go completely without Russian supplies. Last year Europe consumed half of Russia’s entire gas production.
liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the European market, following the EU’s severance from Russian pipeline gas. The goal is to replace it with American LNG. According to the Financial Times, Trump has threatened the EU with a trade war if it doesn’t increase imports of US oil and gas. Technically, this goal could be feasible closer to 2029: "S&P Global Commodity Insights reported that 10.3mn tonnes of LNG have already been contracted for Europe from US plants under construction. An additional 9.5mn tonnes are also available for purchase, including by European buyers. These volumes surpass the 17mn tonnes of Russian LNG imported by the EU in 2024. These US LNG facilities are expected to become operational in 2029." Gas prices in Europe currently remain three times higher than in the US and are still over twice as expensive as before the Ukraine-Russia conflict began in early 2022. This price disparity has enabled American LNG producers to reap enormous profits from supplying Europe. Some way to bargain with Putin as well.
Front line in slow collapse
A dire shortage of infantry troops and supply routes under heavy fire are contributing to the slow collapse of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) defence of the front line in Donbas, AP reports.
Ukrainian troops are losing ground as the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) have made steady, if very costly, advances towards the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk, the nexus of several roads and rail links that are crucial to the logistical support of Ukraine’s defence. The assault on Pokrovsk has been going on for months as AFR has made slow progress in an operation that is costing Russia up to 1,000 fallen soldiers a day, according to some reports.
Ukrainian soldiers in Pokrovsk told AP that Russian forces have changed tactics and abandoned their frontal attacks in order to try to outflank the defenders in a pincer movement instead. The AFR have already taken the high ground which puts several roads supplying the defenders in range.
The Pokrovsk-Pavlohrad-Dnipro highway is “already under the control of Russian drones,” the commander at Pokrovsk’s flanks told AP. Russian forces are less than four kilometres away and are affecting Ukrainian traffic, he said. “Now the road is only 10% of its former capacity,” he said. Another paved highway, the Myrnohrad-Kostyantynivka road, is also under Russian fire, he said.
Heavy fog in recent days has prevented Ukrainian soldiers from using surveillance drones, allowing Russian soldiers to move up and dig into well defended positions to consolidate the ground they control. In some places the AFU have already had to abandon the roads leading to Pokrovsk and drive supplies over open muddy fields to reach their troops on the frontline.
The village of Velyka Novosilka fell to Russia last week, on the approach to Pokrovsk, their most significant gain since seizing the city of Kurakhove in the Donetsk region in January, after Russia amassed ten columns of infantry supported by mechanised armour around the town. The Russian assault was aided by the bad weather, which has reduced the effectiveness of drones, Ukraine’s most potent weapon against advancing Russian infantry.
As bne IntelliNews reported, the last civilians and children still in Pokrovsk were evacuated last week and the key coal mine near the town, that supplies most of Ukraine’s metallurgy industry with coking coal, has been closed down in anticipation of the battle to come. Ukraine’s strategically important lithium deposit is also close to Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian commanders complained to AP of “catastrophic” shortages of men and one commander estimated that Russian forces outnumbered their Ukrainian counterparts by 20:1. Those fresh recruits the AFU have received in recent months are mostly inexperienced and undertrained fresh recruits that are ineffective on the battlefield.
Poorly trained and inexperienced newly created infantry units are putting more pressure on battle-hardened brigades in the front line who have to step in to shore up defences as they are “constantly extending the front line because they leave their positions, they do not hold them, they do not control them, they do not monitor them. We do almost all the work for them,” the Ukrainian commander told AP.
“Because of this, having initially a 2-km area of responsibility, you end up with 8-9km per battalion, which is a lot and we don’t have enough resources,” a deputy commander with call sign Afer told AP. “It’s not because they have lower quality infantry, but because they are completely unprepared for modern warfare,” he said of the new recruits.
