Trump's latest Ukraine-Russia u-turn: Why is the US resuming arms supplies?
'This time, [Trump] realised he'll look bad, weak, he'll look like he's on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's side,' the 29-year-old, who was demobilised after being wounded in the eastern Donbas region in March, told Al Jazeera.
Trump said on Monday that he reversed the White House's decision days earlier on July 1 to 'pause' arms supplies to Kyiv, including crucially important air defence interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles.
In February, he froze aid after a falling out with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – but resumed the supplies weeks later.
Monday's resumption followed Russia's intensified attacks. In recent weeks, Ukrainians have endured hours-long overnight drone and missile assaults on key cities that have killed and wounded civilians – and kept millions awake.
'We're going to send some more weapons. We have to [so that Ukrainians] have to be able to defend themselves,' Trump told a news conference in Washington, DC.
On Tuesday, Trump went further. He hinted that the Russian leader has flattered him for months but kept coming up with lists of impossible demands and ignoring calls for a ceasefire.
'We get a lot of bullsh-t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,' Trump told a news conference on Tuesday. 'He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.'
Putin's demands include the 'demilitarisation' and 'de-Nazification' of Ukraine that is allegedly ruled, according to the Kremlin, by a 'neo-Nazi junta'.
Moscow also wants the West to lift multi-layered sanctions that are beginning to hobble Russia's economy, and the return of assets frozen in Western banks. On Tuesday, Trump said he is considering additional sanctions on Russia.
Boosting air defence
The US weapons Kyiv needs the most are air defence missiles.
In June, Russia launched a record 5,438 drones, a quarter more than in March, according to the Ukrainian air force.
More than half of the drones are laden with explosives, while the rest are decoys Ukrainians waste their missiles on, or reconnaissance drones that track down locations of air defence teams and Western-supplied Patriot systems.
The Russian drones – and the cruise or ballistic missiles that follow them – hit civilian areas, causing more casualties every month.
After multiple tactical adjustments, Russian drones can now fly several kilometres above ground, making them unreachable to air defence teams with machineguns – and making Kyiv even more dependent on US-made air defence weaponry.
'The dependence rose dramatically in comparison with 2022, because at the time Ukrainian forces had many Soviet-era [air defence] systems and missiles that were depleted by the end of 2023,' Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
'Yes, US supplies are of paramount importance so that Russia doesn't blow all of Ukraine's rear areas with its drones,' he said.
Another backbone of Ukrainian forces is US-made HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) multiple rocket launchers that have been lethally effective in destroying Russian command posts and arms depots.
'There have been no analogues to HIMARS,' Mitrokhin said.
'Trumpian hills'
Trump's U-turns regarding the aid resumptions are both personal and administrative.
They stem from his own 'mood swings' and the lack of systemic, coordinated efforts of his administration, according to Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank.
'I'd call them 'Trumpian hills',' he said.
The decision on Monday to resume aid is a response to Putin's apparent reluctance to resume peace talks while adding pressure on Moscow's forces at the front line.
The main reason for the war's escalation is that the Kremlin has concluded that the US will no longer help Ukraine, giving Russia a clear chance to win the war, Fesenko said.
The Republican Party had also urged Trump to end the aid freeze that made Washington look 'morally dissonant', he added.
However, arms supplies may become 'systemic' and long-term if Western nations led by the United Kingdom and France agree to foot the bill, he said.
Later this week, a 31-nation-strong 'Coalition of the Willing' that includes most of Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, will convene in Rome for a conference on peace settlement and recovery in Ukraine.
'Not a serious politician'
Meanwhile, Trump's U-turn did not catch Moscow by surprise.
The Kremlin is used to Trump's mood swings and 'don't think anything new' about him, a former Russian diplomat said.
'Trump is not a serious politician, he contradicts himself,' Boris Bondarev, who quit his Foreign Ministry job in protest against Moscow's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.
'That's why [the Kremlin] needs to follow his actions and try not to anger him too much, meanwhile continuing its own course – to advance on the front line and to force Ukraine and the West to accept [Moscow's] conditions,' he said.
Meanwhile, Russian forces keep pushing in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where their earlier advance stalled in June.
They have also occupied several hundred square kilometres in the southeast and south, but failed to regain a Ukrainian toehold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
Top Russian officials have refrained from commenting on the aid resumption, while minor figures offered a tried-and-tested explanation – the West's alleged centuries-old enmity towards Russia.
'The trick is old and ineffective, but the West hasn't come up with other ways of influencing Russia in the past 1,000 years – or maybe they didn't want to,' Dmitry Belik, a Russian politician in the Russia-annexed Crimean city of Sevastopol, told the RIA Novosti news agency on Tuesday.
Vladimir Rogov, a top official on the 'integration' of Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions, told Russian media, 'Trump wants Russia to do the impossible – give up its national interests and stop pursuing the [war] without any clear guarantees of [Moscow's] security.'
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