President Donald Trump is surprising some critics by driving towards what might well turn out to be a strong plan to end the war in Ukraine. Trump’s top advisers will discuss potential deal terms with allies this week in Kyiv and Munich, and Trump has said he may soon host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington. Trump and his national security team enter this diplomatic blitz looking coordinated, having met in the Oval Office last Thursday to talk about how to use all elements of national power to end the war.
To deliver the strongest and most sustainable peace deal, this whole-of-government effort must include a quick restoration of U.S. non-military assistance to Ukraine. That would advance the sensible goal articulated by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make foreign aid more responsive to foreign policy. Not exempting Ukraine from the global freeze on U.S. assistance — during winter and in the midst of war — undermines their objectives of bringing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and rebuilding Ukraine’s leverage after it suffered under President Joe Biden’s reticence and indecision.
Delays in Aid Weaken Kyiv’s Hand
During the Biden administration, holdups in military and economic assistance to Ukraine impaired Kyiv’s leverage. That was exacerbated by a six-month delay in congressional action on military and economic aid in late 2023 and early 2024, allowing Russia to retake the battlefield initiative and degrade Ukrainian energy infrastructure with repeated air assaults. Congress finally passed the legislation in April, with caveats such as one Trump favored that made some of the Ukraine assistance a forgivable loan. Presumably not wanting to return to the White House with Kyiv teetering on the precipice, then-candidate Trump backed the supplemental and it passed.
The Biden administration also repeatedly slow-rolled decisions to provide Ukraine the advanced weapons it needed and ease restrictions on their use. Paralyzed with fear that nuclear-armed Russia might escalate in response — which never happened — Biden repeatedly relented only after months of appeals from Kyiv and NATO allies, even as devastating consequences mounted. In the past three years, the war has killed an estimated 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers and possibly as many as 200,000 Russian troops.
Trump’s Position of Strength
Trump has now returned to power in a position of strength vis-à-vis Putin, who has been greatly diminished by a war he assumed would last three weeks. Russia suffers with an incompetent military and limps along with Iranian drones and North Korean soldiers. It pushed Sweden and Finland into NATO, faced an insurrection, couldn’t prop up its client regime in Syria, and is spiraling towards becoming China’s vassal. Pulling off a historic political comeback, Trump again commands the world’s most powerful military, presides over the fastest-growing G7 economy, and has economically and militarily advanced allies dedicated to Ukraine. As the dominant partner in this relationship, it is Trump, not Putin, who can set negotiating terms.
Trump’s power is reflected in his initial steps. He threatened Putin with higher taxes, tariffs, and sanctions if he refuses to deal. Trump asked the Saudis to pressure Russia by bringing down oil prices. His national security advisor, former U.S. Representative Michael Waltz, seems inclined to lift weapons restrictions. New Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is considering the full arsenal of financial tools, from sanctions to loans secured by rare earth minerals to confiscation of frozen Russian assets. And the Pentagon moved Patriot missiles to Ukraine that Israel had decommissioned. All these improvements on Biden’s policies aim to make Putin negotiate and shore up Ukraine’s leverage — key to making a deal stick.
Frozen Aid to Ukraine Endangers Trump’s Foreign Policy
However, that strong start is being unintentionally undercut by the freeze on non-military assistance to Ukraine, which got swept up in the State Department’s order implementing a Trump executive order by freezing almost all U.S. foreign aid work globally, with limited exceptions for military financing for Israel and Egypt, emergency food aid, and, added later, life-saving humanitarian assistance. Rubio says that, as the weeks go on, more programs will come back online after reviewing their alignment with Trump’s foreign policy.
The biggest threat to a good deal on Ukraine that would provide Trump a lasting foreign policy legacy would be a settlement that leaves Kyiv without sufficient security guarantees and societal resilience to deter Russia from reinvading. A deputy under secretary of defense from Trump’s first term warns that without strong U.S. support, Kyiv could fall as soon as 2026. That would be even more humiliating than Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Such a collapse would be far more likely if Ukraine enters negotiations on shaky footing, pressured to take a deal that won’t hold Russia back. Such was the result of weak assurances in then-President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine, Russia, and the U.K. that Putin ignored years later, as well as the Minsk Agreements negotiated under President Barack Obama after Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region of Ukraine.
Trump’s opportunity to strike a deal that better stands the test of time by leaving Russia no room to restart the war is undermined by the increasing chaos in Ukraine over the past two weeks due to the freeze in U.S. non-military assistance. While the European Union is the biggest provider of non-military aid to Ukraine, the United States has provided $37 billion in humanitarian aid, development assistance and direct support to keep government services functioning since the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion.
Winter and War Without Aid Makes a Desperate Negotiating Partner
Havoc resulting from the U.S. freeze support is most acute in Ukraine’s energy sector, which has received the lion’s share of U.S. non-military wartime assistance. Frontline residents have stopped receiving firewood, their sole source of light, warmth, and cooking fuel, because those supplying it were funded by the United States. Mobile boiler houses sit idle, unable to heat schools and hospitals. Repairs are ceasing at power plants bombed by Russia. Support has ended for U.S. natural gas exporters that started shipping to Ukraine earlier this winter, building on market reforms and U.S. business collaborations initiated during the first Trump administration.
Cutting off Ukrainian energy in winter and before negotiations is how Putin hurts Ukraine. Why would he even negotiate so long as the United States continues to hobble Ukraine in this way?
Beyond energy, abruptly halting humanitarian and civil society work amid a total war is devastating. Wartime services in Ukraine that have shuttered operations due to the U.S. stop-work orders include first responders, border infrastructure, evacuation routes, and community repairs and refugee shelters that help families stay in Ukraine. Organizations that provide medicine and psychological support to war-affected children have stopped operating. For veterans, offices to help them find jobs have closed and suicide lines go unanswered.
Also in limbo are civil society projects, which have been at the heart of Ukraine’s civic nationalism since the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity. Anti-corruption reform processes lack quorums needed to continue, like the selection of an honest leader for the State Customs Service and judges for the High Anti-Corruption Court. Processes of investigating Russian war crimes are similarly halted. Other U.S. programs fortify Ukraine against the malign economic and cyber influence of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea; they’re also now frozen.
If this turmoil persists, Ukraine will emerge from winter so desperate to stop suffering that they will not have the wherewithal to keep pace with Trump in negotiations with Russia and forge a deal that endures through the ages. Thus, as the Trump administration makes its full-court press with top-level diplomacy in Washington, Kyiv, and Munich this week, the State Department should prioritize Ukraine among programs to be reactivated immediately, to ensure close alignment with Trump’s foreign policy agenda.