What it would take to save Ukraine Donald Trump is pledging more weapons to Kyiv, but U.S. stockpile drawdowns are falling short in a war of attrition

Donald Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. is sending additional weapons to Ukraine, including sought-after interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. Trump declared that Kyiv’s European allies will pay for the new shipments — an arrangement, he argued, that avoids repeating his predecessor’s policy of supplying arms to Ukraine at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. The administration will now resume weapons shipments, just a few weeks after the U.S. Department of Defense halted supplies amid concerns about America’s own dwindling stockpiles. However, as Meduza explains, Washington will need to overhaul its entire approach to supporting Ukraine if it hopes to deliver the “record-breaking” levels needed to prevail.

The debate about the Trump administration’s inconsistency in arms shipments to Ukraine has overshadowed a more fundamental issue: the president’s limited power to expand these deliveries. The reality is that the commander-in-chief cannot, with a single executive order, compel the nation’s industries to churn out armaments faster than their current capacity allows. Regardless of who occupies the White House, any radical increase in U.S. aid to Ukraine would require a broad political consensus to commandeer American industrial output.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, co-author of legislation proposing 500-percent tariffs on Russian oil buyers, has vowed that weapons will flow at a “record level.” However, achieving this would require revising the aid policy inherited from the Biden administration. Until then, the president has at his disposal only those instruments that have proven insufficient for a Ukrainian breakthrough on the battlefield. Any serious effort by the U.S. to force Vladimir Putin to make peace or agree to a long-term ceasefire will need Washington’s unequivocal political resolve and, most importantly, new, more robust mechanisms for supporting Kyiv.

The weapons supplies that the Trump administration paused and then increased

Every instrument currently used to deliver U.S. arms to Ukraine, as well as the contracts for these shipments, was developed under the Biden administration. There are two main channels.

Drawing down weapons from stockpiles

• The Biden administration’s principal conduit for supplying weapons to Ukraine was the drawdown of arms and munitions stockpiled in U.S. military warehouses. The president’s power to make such transfers rests with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which established the President Drawdown Authority, or PDA. That law sets a $100-million statutory cap per fiscal year on the value of transferred weapons, unless Congress raises or waives the cap. In early 2022, when Russia was amassing troops at Ukraine’s border but had not yet launched its full-scale invasion, U.S. lawmakers granted Biden’s request to increase the PDA cap to $11 billion. The following year, as Kyiv planned a major counteroffensive, Congress authorized a drawdown of up to $14.5 billion in stockpiled weapons. By the time Biden left office, drawdowns of weapons worth $32 billion had been sent to Ukraine.
• The drawdown procedure doesn’t require additional appropriations from the U.S. budget, but the Biden administration decided to replenish Pentagon stockpiles with new and more costly weaponry. These purchases, amounting to tens of billions of dollars and ultimately serving American defense interests, represented one of the most expensive elements of all U.S. “aid” to Ukraine. Although the law does not mandate the replacement of drawn-down equipment, Biden adhered strictly to this policy. When Biden left office, he still had the authority to draw down several more billions of dollars in weapons from the prior fiscal year. However, without money set aside to restock Pentagon warehouses, no more weapons were sent.
• The Biden administration used the PDA framework to expedite aid to Ukraine, often moving from approval to delivery in days or even hours (particularly when supplies were already in Eastern Europe). Frequently, shipments arrived before official announcements were made.
• Deliveries authorized under Biden’s drawdown orders have largely concluded. The remaining weapons covered by these measures are expected to arrive in Ukraine by August 2025.

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Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative

• The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a special military aid agreement for Ukraine, was introduced by the first Trump administration in 2020, not by Biden. The arrangement involved contracts with American arms manufacturers for assistance to Kyiv, funded directly from the U.S. federal budget, with allocations subject to yearly congressional approval.
• The initiative gained significant momentum only after Russia’s full-scale invasion. In 2022, Biden secured congressional approval to increase funding from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars. The initiative also paid for U.S. intelligence and training for Ukraine’s military.
• Most contracts were long-term, often taking months or even years from agreement to delivery. For example, the first Patriot air defense missiles sent to Ukraine in 2022–2023 came from Pentagon stockpiles through drawdowns, while production of PAC-3 MSE ballistic interceptors by Lockheed Martin specifically for Ukraine began only in 2024.
• As a result, the program lacked flexibility: funding was set in one environment, but shipments arrived under different conditions. For example, a substantial part of the USAI program consists of 2022 contracts for American-made Switchblade-600 and Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones, which underperformed on the battlefield compared to models using Chinese commercial components, likely due to high cost and low supply.
• Contracts supporting Ukraine were largely supplemental to the Pentagon’s major deals with arms manufacturers. Public audits reveal some deals for Patriot interceptors and HIMARS rockets run through 2026, alongside contracts for Kuwait and other customers of American military technology.
• Since 2023, the U.S. has not disclosed exact quantities of weapons and ammunition delivered to Ukraine under these provisions, and several supplementary agreements have expanded the principal contracts with defense companies. This system allows flexibility in adjusting delivery priorities and timelines for individual countries, as the Pentagon recently demonstrated by redirecting shipments originally intended for Ukraine. This maneuver is consistent with the Defense Production Act of 1950, most recently revised in 2018. The majority of the DPA authorities will expire in September 2025, but the law’s renewal — potentially with greater presidential latitude — is under consideration.
• Countries like Germany, which purchase the same PAC-3 interceptor systems from the U.S., must secure Washington’s approval to re-export weapons to Ukraine.
• The largest wave of USAI arms deliveries is yet to come, with contracts overseen by the Biden administration running at least through 2028.

So, has Trump devised something new?

The U.S. has occasionally transferred weapons through intermediary countries like Germany, with those countries footing the bill. However, this arrangement fails to address the underlying constraint: American defense manufacturers lack the capacity to meet global demand, and the president cannot compel them to manufacture sufficient quantities. As a result, production growth has been slow. In response to pressure from the Biden administration, Lockheed Martin announced an increase in PAC-3 production from 500 units to 600 in 2025, with further expansion to 650 units anticipated by 2027.

At the same time, Russia is believed to produce around 750 ballistic missiles annually — a daunting figure, given that shooting down a single missile requires multiple interceptors. In other words, even supplying Ukraine with every new PAC-3 missile would not suffice to halt Russian airstrikes. The same is true for other air defense systems capable of intercepting cruise missiles, long-range kamikaze drones, and related threats.

The arsenal provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative plainly does not meet Ukraine’s needs, but it also falls short of Washington’s needs if Donald Trump genuinely hopes to pressure Vladimir Putin into a lasting truce. Between 2022 and 2024, the U.S. became Kyiv’s main supplier of armored vehicles (excluding tanks) and artillery systems by drawing down Pentagon stockpiles, notably the Bradley IFV and Stryker APC. Much of this hardware has been lost in combat, and any new acquisitions — even funded by Europe — would still have to come from those same Pentagon stockpiles.

However, strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses alone will not guarantee a swift victory. Turning the tide in the war requires a comprehensive, long-term, and stable program from the West, led by the United States. This program must be insulated from shifting political winds and supply a broad array of weapons, including battlefield systems, vehicles, and equipment for establishing new units. It will also require significant financial resources to fund the recruitment of tens of thousands of volunteer contractors. This is what it would take to give Ukraine a viable path to outlasting the Kremlin in a war of attrition.