On Tuesday, July 2, Politico and NBC News revealed that the United States had suspended the delivery of several strategic weapons systems to Ukraine. The decision, which was actually made as early as June according to internal Pentagon sources cited by U.S. media, had not been publicly announced and has since been confirmed by Trump administration officials.
The Financial Times reports that Kyiv discovered this announcement in the press, surprising the Ukrainian government after the informal meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in The Hague a few days earlier. According to Politico, missiles already in transit to Ukraine and then on Polish soil were even stopped en route.
While the Ukrainian issue was relegated to the background at the Hague summit, with Ukraine appearing only twice in the final text compared to more than sixty times in 2024, this suspension of arms deliveries demonstrates a partial disengagement of the United States from the Ukrainian front, with an increasingly abstentionist policy on the part of Donald Trump, who wishes to concentrate his forces in the Middle East and Asia to counter the decline of U.S. imperialism.
Suspension of Strategic Weapons for Control of Ukrainian Skies
This suspension affects some of the most critical equipment for Ukrainian defense, including Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155mm shells, GMLRS guided rockets, AIM missiles, and AT4 anti-tank rocket launchers. These systems are used daily by the Ukrainian military to counter Russian strikes, particularly Shahed drones, which have been in widespread use for several months. This decision comes as Russia has intensified its air offensives.
On the night of June 29, Russia carried out the largest attack since the beginning of the war: 537 drones and missiles targeted seven regions of Ukraine. The interception rate, which exceeded 80 percent in previous years at the same time, fell in June to around 50 percent due to the phenomenal increase in the number of drones sent, despite the use of the most advanced Western systems. While the suspension concerns munitions essential to Ukrainian air defense, it comes at a critical moment for the Ukrainian regime. According to an expert from the Center for Defense Strategies in Kyiv quoted by the Financial Times, “the absence of Patriot missiles will lead to an increase in successful Russian strikes on cities, and the absence of GMLRS will reduce deep strike capabilities.”
While the Ukrainian army is dependent on support from imperialist states, the United States alone provided more than $66 billion in military aid between 2022 and May 2025, including more forms of support like intelligence, logistics coordination, and training and long-range weapons including Patriot missiles and HIMARS. Even though Ukraine has developed its own arms industry, with a production capacity estimated at 30 percent of its needs, it remains structurally dependent on Western support for intelligence, planning and long-range strikes, sectors that the European imperialist states cannot compensate for in the short term.
On the Ukrainian side, the shock is all the greater as Zelenskyy had renewed his calls in recent weeks for the purchase of Patriot systems, following the intensification of Russian strikes, to which Trump responded particularly curtly during the last NATO summit: “We’ll see. We need them too“ before adding: “We already deliver them to Israel, and they are very effective.” In this way, the American president is expressing his growing disinterest in the Ukrainian front, while negotiations under the aegis of the United States for a ceasefire have so far failed.
In this context, the suspension of certain vital systems cannot be considered a technical measure. It represents a turning point in the United States’ attitude, and this comes at a time when Ukrainian defenses are under severe strain. Rather than a simple logistical adjustment, this is a political gesture with far-reaching consequences for the rest of the war in Ukraine and for American imperialism.
Faced with the Decline of its Imperialism, the United States is Refocusing on the Middle East and China
Behind the partial suspension of military aid to Ukraine lies a strategic repositioning of American imperialism. According to Politico and NBC News, it was Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top strategic advisor, who spearheaded the reassessment of deliveries based on stockpiles, considering that American munitions reserves were becoming critical after years of shipments to Kyiv, but also because of the large-scale military operations in the Middle East.
The Trump administration justified the decision in the name of the “America First” doctrine. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said the suspension was made “to put America’s interests first,” adding, “the strength of the American military remains unquestioned—just ask Iran.” For his part, the Defense Department spokesperson emphasized that the Pentagon was “rigorously adapting its approach to ensure American operational capability while supporting the president’s policies.“
This positioning is part of a clear shift in U.S. imperialist strategy since Trump’s return to power. The U.S. military effort is being redeployed toward two areas considered priorities: the Middle East — the scene of direct clashes with the Houthis in Yemen and an escalation with Iran — and the Indo-Pacific region, continuing the strategic standoff with China, seen by Trump and the American bourgeoisie as the main threat to their hegemony.
In fact, Trump has devoted his first months in office to these two fronts. The attack on Iran marked a sharp break with previous forms of balance, confirming the accelerated entry into a new era of high-intensity regional conflicts. At the same time, Washington has relaunched its activism in Asia through the Quad — an alliance with India, Australia, and Japan — around a clear objective: securing critical mineral supply chains and confronting Chinese dominance over strategic resources, at the heart of the trade war between Trump and China in recent weeks.
While Trumpism has a largely MAGA social base hostile to direct involvement in conflicts abroad, particularly in Europe, the partial halt in deliveries to Ukraine can also be read as a message to its base, following Iran’s unilateral aggression, which could be perceived as a return to “endless wars” and accentuated internal contradictions within the administration and the Trumpist camp. Trump is trying to keep this base mobilized through radical nationalist rhetoric, but this posture clashes with the imperatives of American imperialism, which require committing armed forces in several regions of the world to defend its interests. This tension between an isolationist posture and imperialist realities is at the heart of his “enhanced Bonapartism”: an authoritarian concentration of executive power in the service of a military-economic agenda centered on the main threats to American hegemony.
As the Russian military intensifies its strikes, the White House now appears open to unilateral disengagement without reaching a ceasefire to justify the disengagement. Trump has repeatedly pressured Zelenskyy to compromise with Moscow, never hiding his preference for a quick agreement, whatever the cost to Ukraine. As for Putin, he seems to still want to spare him for the time being, after repeatedly threatening to impose sanctions against Russian oil industries. This decision thus follows on from the conclusions of the last NATO summit, in which Trump expressed his desire to disengage the United States from Europe and entrust the European powers with the task of defending their reactionary interests alone, in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Neither Democrats nor Trump Are Allies of the Ukrainian People
Faced with the Trump administration’s suspension of certain arms deliveries, Democratic Party figures were quick to denounce Ukraine’s “abandonment.”Several elected officials demanded the continuation of military aid, asserting that it was a matter of “European security” and “American credibility.” This posture, classic in Atlanticist circles, gives the illusion of a divide between two camps: on one side, an isolationist Trump, and on the other, Democrats who defend the Ukrainian people. This is not the case: if the Democrats criticize the freeze on deliveries, it is not in the name of disinterested solidarity with the Ukrainian population, but rather of strategic disagreements over how to ensure the continuation of the war and the defense of American interests. The Democrats thus reaffirm their preference for a hegemonic strategy that Trump considers outdated, based on more flexible cooperation with European allies, which, however, does not at any time call into question the objective of the vassalization of Ukraine pursued by all imperialist states.
In this new phase, the risk of a unilateral U.S. withdrawal is growing. Faced with this, the European powers find themselves in an impasse: either they follow the American disengagement and abandon Ukraine, or they abruptly accelerate their rearmament, assuming the military, political, and social costs of the war alone. In both cases, the consequences will be catastrophic for the Ukrainian working classes, subjected to the deadly escalation and the dismemberment of their resources and territory by the imperialists, and for European workers, confronted with militarization, increased defense budgets, and the accompanying security policies.
None of the powers present, whether on the side of the imperialist states or Russia, defend the interests of the Ukrainian population. Neither the Democrats nor Trump defend the American working class, much less the Ukrainian population. At a time when the living conditions of American and European workers are being crushed in the name of rearmament and when the Ukrainian population has suffered Russian aggression for more than three years, only the Ukrainian working class, in conjunction with the oppressed sectors of the Russian population and the workers of the continent, is capable of fighting to end the war and ensure Ukraine’s independence from Russia and European imperialism.
Originally published in French on July 3 in Révolution Permanente.