To the relief of officials in Kyiv, Donald Trump announced this week that the US would resume weapons shipments to Ukraine – just days after those exports were halted by the Pentagon.
The US president told reporters on Monday evening that he would send more weapons to Ukraine – a direct reversal of the order given by his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“We have to, they have to be able to defend themselves,” he said. “They’re getting hit very hard. Now they’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.”
His comments came before Russia launched its largest-ever aerial attack on Ukraine, involving 728 drones and 13 missiles overnight and into Wednesday morning.
“This is a telling attack – and it comes precisely at a time when so many efforts have been made to achieve peace, to establish a ceasefire, and yet only Russia continues to rebuff them all,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday morning.
Last week after weapons shipments were stopped, the Ukrainian president spoke with Trump about the importance of US support.
Below The Independent looks at how much support the US has provided to Ukraine’s war effort, why the Pentagon decided to pause shipments and what could happen from here.
Since just after the war began in February 2022, the US has provided billions of pounds worth of support to Ukraine. It is the largest single nation supporter in financial terms of Ukraine’s war effort.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a think tank based in Germany, estimates that the US has provided €114.6 billion-worth (£98.7 billion) of support to Ukraine, including €3.4bn (£2.9bn) in humanitarian support, €46.6bn (£40.1bn) in financial assistance, and €64.6bn (£55.6bn) in military allocations.
In comparison, the country that has provided the next largest amount of assistance in terms of monetary value is the UK, at €19.3 billion (£16.6bn), while Germany comes in third at €15.9 (£13.7bn), according to the Kiel tracker.
Critical weaponry provided by the US includes three Patriot air defence batteries and munitions, advanced surface-to-air missile systems, a variety of air defence systems and anti-aircraft missiles, guns and ammunition.
The US has also sent 31 Abrams tanks and 45 T-72B tanks, 20 Mi-17 helicopters, and hundreds of other armoured personnel carriers.
Last week, the Pentagon suspended some shipments of military equipment to Ukraine for the second time since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Those shipments included Patriot missiles, artillery shells and other weapons as part of what Pentagon officials described as a pause of arms shipments globally while the US takes stock of its own caches of weaponry.
