President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine entered the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday knowing that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the United States to his country had essentially stopped.
By the time he left, after a televised argument between the two leaders, the situation appeared even more dire.
As the two men met, it had been 50 days since the Pentagon had announced a new package of weapons to Ukraine and the new administration had said little about providing any more.
A Trump administration official said later on Friday that all U.S. aid to Ukraine — including the final shipments of ammunition and equipment authorized and paid for during the Biden administration — could be canceled imminently.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of that country in February 2022, such shipments of military hardware from the United States were announced roughly every two weeks during the Biden administration, and sometimes just five or six days apart.
According to the Pentagon, about $3.85 billion remains of what Congress authorized for additional withdrawals from the Defense Department’s stockpile. A former senior defense official from the Biden administration said the last of the arms Ukraine had purchased from U.S. defense companies would be shipped within the next six months.
After that, it will be up to a host of European and other countries to keep Ukraine’s guns firing.
Mr. Trump has insisted on “payback” for military aid. On Friday, the two leaders had been expected to sign an agreement that would give the United States access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
A draft of the deal vaguely mentioned security guarantees for Ukraine. But Mr. Zelensky left the White House without an agreement, while his country faces relentless attacks from Russian and North Korean troops along a 600-mile front line.
Ukraine has depended on a lifeline of arms from the United States throughout the war, starting the day after Russian troops crossed the border, when the Biden administration announced that it would send Kyiv $350 million worth of arms from the Defense Department’s stockpiles.
After Friday’s spectacle in the Oval Office, the Trump administration official said the president might decide to end even the indirect support being provided by the U.S., which includes other types of military financing, intelligence sharing, training for Ukrainian troops and pilots, and hosting a call center that manages international aid at a U.S. military base in Germany.
Such actions would be a shocking abandonment of an embattled partner nation, marking the death knell of support that had survived a political challenge by House Republicans more than a year ago.
In late October 2023, Speaker Mike Johnson began signaling that he would hold up additional funding for Ukraine in the House after Mr. Trump — then out of office — broadcast his hostility toward further aid.
By the time Mr. Johnson lifted his hold and allowed an aid package to pass on April 20, 2024, Russian troops had advanced as Ukraine’s ammunition supplies dwindled.
Since his election, Mr. Trump has vastly overstated the amount of aid the United States has given Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute, a German research organization. He has also falsely claimed that European contributions to Ukraine were loans that Kyiv would repay.
European nations have contributed $138 billion to Ukraine’s war effort compared with $119 billion in military and humanitarian assistance from the U.S., according to Kiel Institute data.
Once the last of the U.S.-funded purchases of arms end, the main source of military assistance for Kyiv will be the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a collection of roughly 50 nations founded in April 2022 by former Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III. It met 25 times during the Biden administration to coordinate the provision of weapons and the development of new military capabilities for the embattled nation.
At the contact group’s meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in January, Mr. Zelensky said it would be “crazy to drop the ball now” on assistance, after Ukraine had held off Russian forces for so long.
Mr. Austin, when asked whether he thought the new Trump administration would stick with the coalition, declined to speculate, saying that was a decision “for the next administration to make.”
On Feb. 6, the Pentagon said it was passing leadership of the group to Britain.
The Pentagon referred questions about continuing support to Ukraine to the British ministry of defense.
“A just and lasting peace is only possible if we continue to show strength and provide Ukraine with the support it needs to defend itself against continued Russian aggression,” a spokesman for the ministry of defense said in response to questions about how Britain would lead the contact group. “There will be no letup in our support, which we will continue for as long as it is necessary.”