Senior US officials are suggesting that the United States may cut all aid to Ukraine, although US President Donald Trump has not indicated any such intention. Cutting the current flow of aid to Ukraine would directly undermine President Trump’s stated goal of achieving a sustainable peace in Ukraine. The New York Times and Washington Post, citing unnamed senior Trump Administration officials, reported on February 28 that the Trump Administration is considering canceling all US military assistance to Ukraine, including any final aid shipments that former US President Joe Biden approved.
Ukrainian forces, enabled by essential US assistance, are inflicting unsustainable losses on Russian forces while holding them to marginal gains. This situation, combined with the severe challenges Russia will face in 2025, offers the United States great leverage in peace negotiations. A suspension of ongoing US military assistance to Ukraine would encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to increase his demands and fuel his conviction that he can achieve total victory through war. ISW has repeatedly highlighted the importance of continued and timely Western military assistance to Ukraine and observed a correlation between the magnitude of the Russian gains in Ukraine and delays or halts in Western military support. Ukrainian forces have leveraged US-supplied military systems, including Patriot air defense systems and HIMARS and ATACMS long-range strike systems, to defend against nightly Russian drone and missile strikes, enhance Ukraine's strike capabilities, complicate Russian logistics and command and control (C2), and disrupt Russia's defense industrial base (DIB). Ukrainian efforts, aided by the steady flow of Western aid, have significantly slowed Russian advances along the front, inflicted significant Russian personnel and equipment losses, and undermined Russia's efforts to project economic and domestic stability amid rising pressures from the war. Russia's economic, force generation, and defense industrial constraints provide key opportunities that Ukraine, the United States, and its Western allies could leverage to extract concessions from Putin in peace negotiations.
The cessation of US military assistance and monetary assistance aimed at strengthening Ukraine's defense industry could help tip the balance of the war and give Russia greater advantages on the battlefield in Ukraine, increasing the likelihood of a Russian victory in Ukraine. Russia would leverage the cessation of US aid to Ukraine to seize more territory in Ukraine and attempt to exhaust European support – the approach Putin has outlined in his theory of victory. Ending US aid to Ukraine and enabling further Russian gains would also embolden Putin and strengthen his belief that Russia can seize and control Ukraine and other former Soviet countries, including current NATO member states. The Kremlin will likely intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and attempt to exploit any delay or cessation of US military assistance to Ukraine - as the Kremlin did in Spring 2024.
Curtailing aid to Ukraine would risk diminishing US influence in the world and emboldening US adversaries. Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have formed a bloc aimed at defeating the United States and its allies around the world and are currently testing the limits of US commitment to its allies in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. PRC President Xi Jinping stated during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in late February 2025 that the PRC and Russia are "true friends" who "cannot be moved away" from each other and will not be influenced by "any third party." Russia established bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership agreements since the start of the war with the PRC in May 2023, North Korea in October 2024, and Iran in January 2025. Putin continues to rely on Iranian drones and North Korean ballistic missiles and troops in his war against Ukraine. US aid to Ukraine is a demonstration of the United States' commitment to defending democracies against ongoing and future aggression around the world, including but not limited to Ukraine, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. The Russia-led bloc will likely see the United States abandoning Ukraine as an indicator that the United States will abandon its other allies and will seek to test the limits of US commitment around the world. The Russia-led bloc is searching for easily exploitable divisions between the United States and its allies to isolate and weaken the United States on the global stage, allowing adversaries to rise up and dictate where and how the United States can engage the world. Cutting US aid to Ukraine plays directly into these adversaries' goals and is a step toward curtailing US influence in the world.
Putin, not Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, remains the main obstacle to a lasting peace agreement on Ukraine. Zelensky has continuously reiterated his commitment to obtaining a just and lasting peace in Ukraine through negotiations. Zelensky has indicated several times — including in his February 28 Fox News interview — that he is willing to make concessions on territory, Ukraine's NATO membership, and even his own tenure in office to secure a just and sustainable peace. These concessions align with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's February 26 statement that "what Ukraine really needs is deterrence...to make it costly for anyone to come after them again in the future" and that both the United States and Europe "can be involved" in such deterrence efforts.
Putin and other senior Kremlin officials have by contrast continuously reiterated their commitment to Putin's initial war aims in Ukraine, which amount to Ukraine's full capitulation, replacing the current Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian puppet government, and Ukrainian commitments to neutrality and demilitarization — all of which would leave Ukraine nearly helpless against future Russian aggression and destabilization efforts. Putin and other Kremlin officials are repackaging these demands in efforts to appear willing to negotiate in good faith with the United States, likely to extract concessions from the United States regarding Ukraine. Achieving a meaningful peace in Ukraine will require the United States and its allies to help Ukraine continue to inflict significant losses on Russia and to undertake a diplomatic and economic pressure campaign aimed at forcing Putin to abandon his insistence on full Ukrainian surrender and efforts to weaken Europe and the United States.
Key Takeaways:
- Senior US officials are suggesting that the United States may cut all aid to Ukraine, although US President Donald Trump has not indicated any such intention. Cutting the current flow of aid to Ukraine would directly undermine President Trump’s stated goal of achieving a sustainable peace in Ukraine.
- Ukrainian forces enabled by essential US assistance are inflicting unsustainable losses on Russian forces while holding them to marginal gains. This situation, combined with the severe challenges Russia will face in 2025, offers the US great leverage in peace negotiations. A suspension of ongoing US military assistance to Ukraine would encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to increase his demands and fuel his conviction that he can achieve total victory through war.
- Curtailing aid to Ukraine would risk diminishing US influence in the world and emboldening US adversaries.
- Putin, not Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, remains the main obstacle to a lasting peace agreement on Ukraine.
- The Kremlin launched another informational effort intended to discourage additional US and European military assistance to Ukraine by claiming that Russia has won the war in Ukraine.
- European countries remain committed to supporting the Ukrainian military and defense industry, however, amid preparations for a European defense summit about Ukraine on March 2.
- Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Toretsk and Russian forces recently advanced near Velyka Novosilka.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to recruit medically unfit soldiers in an effort to address personnel shortages.
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[ISW] 러시아의 공세 캠페인 평가, 2025년 3월 5일
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