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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. will reduce military aid to Ukraine in upcoming budgets.
He didn’t say stop. He said reduce.
“It is a reduction in this budget,” Hegseth said when asked about upcoming military aid funding for Ukraine. “This administration takes a very different view of that conflict. A negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation’s interests especially with all the competing interests around the globe.”
According to the Associated Press, “the U.S. to date has provided Ukraine more than $66 billion in aid since Russia invaded in February 2022.” That figure only counts direct aid packages—not the billions paid to defense contractors. If you add that in, the real number climbs much higher.
Will the people who profited from this war really allow this to stop? Probably not. Thus the term “reduction” and not “end.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine is already low on weapons and Europe is not about to pick up the slack. Will this push Ukrainian President Zelensky to agree to a peace deal? Who knows, that fool is illogical.
But what it does signal—to Russia and the rest of the world—is a shift. Because let’s be honest: sending missiles to one side while calling for peace with the other has never been a winning diplomatic strategy.