President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are speaking by phone on Thursday after a top U.S. defense official ordered a halt to arms shipments to Ukraine that would have been used to defend against invading Russian forces.
Trump announced the call on his Truth Social account and said the conversation would take place at 10:00 am ET.
The last time the two leaders spoke was on June 14, amid the Israeli-Iranian conflict that ended after Trump ordered U.S. bombers to attack a trio of Iranian nuclear sites and subsequently negotiated a ceasefire between the two nations. Ten days before that, they also spoke on the same topic, at which point Putin had offered to assist in the then-ongoing U.S. nuclear talks with Tehran.
The call between Trump and Putin comes just one day after Washington indirectly aided Putin’s war effort against Ukraine by suspending some shipments of air defense missiles, artillery shells and other weapons as part of what Pentagon officials have described as a pause of arms shipments globally while the U.S. replenishes its own stockpiles.
The pause includes some shipments of Patriot missiles, precision-guided GMLRS, Hellfire missiles and Howitzer rounds, all of which are needed by Ukraine’s defense forces.
Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for policy, said in a statement that the decision to halt some weapons comes as Pentagon officials have aimed to provide Trump “with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine, consistent with his goal of bringing this tragic war to an end.”
“At the same time, the department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving U.S. forces’ readiness for administration defense priorities,” Colby added.
The pause has coincided with a massive Russian air assault on Ukraine that has required the expenditure of many of the Patriot interceptor missiles already allocated to Kyiv.
It also contradicts President Trump’s promise to examine providing yet more Patriots to Ukraine at last month’s NATO summit in The Hague.
At a press conference, the president said he wasn’t ruling out a new defense assistance package for Kyiv.
He told reporters “we’ll see what happens” when asked whether the U.S. would contribute anything on top of the $8 billion pledged by NATO allies as part of the 32-member bloc’s continued support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Speaking on the heels of a closed-door sit-down with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump said there has been “a lot of spirit” in Ukraine’s fight against the invasion Putin ordered in February 2022.
Trump also appeared to shift blame for the continuation and escalation of the war to Putin, marking a dramatic reversal from how he characterized the situation during a contentious Oval Office meeting with Zelensky earlier this year.
“Vladimir Putin really has to end that war,” the president said. “People are dying at levels that people haven’t seen before for a long time.”
He recounted to reporters how he’d rebuked Putin during a recent phone call after the Russian leader offered to mediate an end to hostilities between Israel and Iran, stressing he would rather he brought an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
Trump’s relationship with Putin has appeared to sour in recent months as the Russian dictator has continued to pound civilian targets in Ukraine with drones and missiles, killing thousands and complicating efforts by Trump to cajole both sides to the negotiating table.
In April, he became so irate over Putin’s attacks on civilians that he took to Truth Social to exhort the Russian leader to halt the attacks and get to the negotiating table, writing: “Vladimir, STOP! 5,000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”
Since then, he has floated the possibility of imposing harsh new sanctions on Moscow if Putin refuses to cooperate in the U.S.-led efforts to bring about a settlement in the three-year-old conflict.
