Russia has established new records in its war against Ukraine this week, one day after day for the volume of drones and missiles explosions in its dams.
This also includes the lures sent by Kremlin strategists to further force the besieged anti -missile defense systems from Ukraine.
These increasingly punishing attacks – in June, Russia launched almost twice as many missiles in May – would have helped to convince President Donald Trump to overthrow a Pentagon decision earlier this week which would have at least temporarily interrupted American military aid in the country torn by war.
Why we wrote this
It was a week of roller coaster for Ukraine, with American military aid first stopped, then reinstated. The changes follow the increasingly icy signals of President Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin of his intransigence on peace efforts.
This stage was quickly praised by the supporters of Ukraine as not only merciful but also sensitive to a president who prides himself on his negotiation skills. Mr. Trump was clear that he wanted this war to end. But by reporting for months that he wanted to reduce American military aid in Ukraine, the president also knew his own position, according to some analysts. Now the American president seeks to refine his position towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin was little encouraged to negotiate, “because from his point of view, he wins,” said retired colonel Mark Cancien, principal advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think Trump may have recognized this.”
This intransigence on the part of Mr. Putin gave Trump the growing feeling he is “played”, as a senior American official says, leading to an increasingly fractured relationship between the two world leaders.
“It is very nice to us all the time, but it turns out that it doesn’t make sense,” Trump said on Tuesday. “I am not satisfied with Putin. I can tell you a lot at the moment, because he is killing a lot of people. ”
It remains to be seen whether the president’s frustration towards Mr. Putin leads to a lasting reversal of American policy towards Ukraine, according to analysts. In the meantime, it is clear that the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy works hard to capitalize on the development fault between the two world leaders by making his own openings to the Trump administration.
However, many advisers close to Mr. Trump see more urgent threats to the United States emanating from Asia and would prefer to run the attention and resources in this direction.
European officials, well aware of this, intensify their own support for Ukraine because it supported what the United States can do or not. The question in the coming months is whether it will be enough to provide a stable flow of help to fill the considerable defensive gaps that remain.
Trump exchange position
A certain number of European officials have admitted to having been emotional recently by an exchange between Myroslava Petsa, a Ukrainian journalist, and Mr. Trump in which they detected an emotion that they had not previously associated with the American president: compassion.
Ms. Petsa asked at a NATO summit at the end of last month if the president was planning to sell his country the American missile systems essential to his defense against Russia. Moscow “was beating Ukraine very well at the moment,” Petsa told the president. This includes Kyiv, who had previously been more isolated for the implacable attacks that the cities further east had lived.
Trump, noticing that Mrs. Petsa was emotional, asked if her husband was a soldier. She said he is fighting while she and her children have evacuated to Poland.
“It’s rough stuff,” said Trump. As for air defense systems, he added: “We will see if we can make it available. They are very difficult to obtain. ” He told her to say hello to her husband.
The exchange has created an agitation, which prompted some officials to wonder if Mr. Trump would modify his historical position against American military aid for Ukraine.
Last week, this possibility seemed to be eccentric because the Pentagon announced a break in arms deliveries in Kyiv. “We cannot give arms to everyone around the world,” said Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell during a press conference on July 2.
But while President Trump reversed the course of his administration this week, opening his own defense officials, he seemed to echo the concerns of Ms. Petsa and his words. “We are going to send more weapons. We must. They must be able to defend themselves,” he said.
“They are very harshly affected at the moment.”
Reaction in Russia and Ukraine
The Kremlin swore when he learned for the first time on stopping the Pentagon in arms sales to Ukraine, saying that this would bring a faster end to the conflict, probably by forcing kyiv to accept unfavorable Russian terms in the face of bombings.
As Mr. Trump expressed irritation that the end of the war in Ukraine is more difficult than he thought, Mr. Putin was, from the point of view of the administration, casual.
“That’s how it is,” said Putin at a press conference in Bélarus at the end of last month. “Real life is always more complicated than the idea.”
Mr. Zelenskyy endeavors to capitalize on the frustration of Mr. Trump with Mr. Putin, largely by changing pugs in his own relations with the United States
Mauro Scrobogna / Lapresse / AP
To begin with, Mr. Zelenskyy wore a dark costume jacket at his last meeting with Mr. Trump – a clear answer to the criticism of his camouflage outfit by the president and vice -president JD Vance during the visit of Mr. Zelenskyy’s white house.
The Ukrainian version of Elle magazine called it “visual diplomacy”.
More substantially, the administration of Mr. Zelenskyy confirmed on Wednesday that it replaces Oksana Markarova, the Ukraine ambassador to the United States, which was criticized by the Republicans as developing ties too much closure with the Democratic Party during his four years of work.
Just as important from the point of view of analysts, instead of asking for donations of American weapons, Mr. Zelenskyy now asks Mr. Trump if Ukraine can buy them.
“Ukraine is ready to buy this equipment and support American weapons manufacturers,” said Zelenskyy on the social platform X last month, adding that managers also discussed the possibility of co-production of drones. “We can strengthen each other.”
American and European military aid
At the same time, Europe, the United Kingdom and Canada have increased their aid in Ukraine to nearly $ 24 billion in the first three months of 2025, including some 2 million artillery shells.
NATO member states plan to provide $ 40 billion more by the end of the year, according to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
As a comparison, the United States has provided more than $ 65 billion in weapons and military aid to Ukraine since 2022.
Since Trump took office, Ukraine military support has declined. Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth jumped the last meeting of the Ukrainian Defense Defense Contact Group with European allies in Brussels last month, the first time that US Secretary for Defense was not present.
Pentagon policy chief Eldridge Colby, for his part, has long pleaded for an American strategic pivot towards Asia. It is not the only region that requires attention in the middle of American shortages, said Parnell during the pentagon briefing on July 2. As tensions increased in the Middle East, the Pentagon has diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles initially planned for Ukraine to American forces.
Europe hopes that the Trump administration will accept to allow European partners to obtain American weapons on behalf of Ukraine. But for this, the production capacity on both continents must increase, explains Rafael Loss, a stock market at the European Council for Foreign Relations.
And while Europe intensifies its production of systems that intercept cruise missiles and drones, with regard to the defense against Russia’s ballistic missiles, “there is almost no alternative” to American patriotic batteries.
For the moment, Moscow missile attacks against Ukraine increase while “less and less of these missiles are intercepted,” said Loss. Regarding the defensive capacities of Ukraine, even with the current levels of help from the United States and Europe, it adds: “It is obviously not enough”.
