Oleg Davygora13:45, 06.05.25

The agency reports that the order to temporarily suspend arms supplies to Ukraine was given personally by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth without approval from the White House.

About a week after Donald Trump began his second presidential term, the US military ordered three cargo airlines based at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and a US base in the UAE to stop 11 flights carrying artillery shells and other weapons bound for Ukraine, Reuters reports .

It is noted that within a few hours, Washington received fierce requests from Ukrainians in Kyiv and from officials in Poland, where the deliveries were coordinated.

“Who ordered the U.S. Army Transportation Command, known as TRANSCOM, to suspend flights? Is this a permanent halt to all aid? Or just a temporary one? Top national security officials — in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department — could not provide answers. Within a week, flights resumed,” the article says.

The verbal order came from the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to TRANSCOM records reviewed by the publication.

The flight cancellations came after Trump wrapped up a meeting on Ukraine in the Oval Office on Jan. 30 with Hegseth and other senior national security officials. The idea of ​​cutting aid to Ukraine was raised during the meeting, two people familiar with the meeting said, but the president stopped short of ordering the aid to be cut.

Significantly, Trump was unaware of Hegseth’s order, as were other senior national security officials who participated in the meeting, according to multiple Reuters sources.

Asked for comment, the White House said Hegseth was following Trump’s directive to withhold aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration’s position at the time. It did not explain why senior national security officials involved in the normal decision-making process were unaware of the order or why it was so quickly rescinded.

According to data analyzed by Reuters, the flight cancellations cost TRANSCOM $2.2 million.

“The story of flight cancellations, first detailed by Reuters, points to a sometimes chaotic decision-making process in the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own senior members. The multi-day pause in flights, confirmed by five sources familiar with the matter, also points to confusion in how the administration develops and implements national security policy,” the article notes.

Many current and former Pentagon officials say the agency suffers from internal disagreements on foreign policy issues, deep-seated resentments and inexperience among staff.

Interestingly, reporters were unable to determine exactly when Hegset’s office ordered the cargo flights canceled. Two sources said Ukrainian and European officials began asking for a pause as early as February 2. TRANSCOM records indicate that there was a verbal order from “SECDEF” — the Secretary of Defense — to stop the flights, and that they resumed by February 5. Mark Cancian, a retired naval officer and defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, said:

“It’s in line with the administration’s policy of moving fast, breaking everything and figuring it out later. That’s their philosophy of governance. That’s great for Silicon Valley. But when you’re talking about institutions that have been around for hundreds of years, you’re going to run into problems.”

Significantly, the canceled flights contained weapons that had long been approved by the Biden administration and authorized by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Reuters also could not determine whether Hegseth or his team knew how the TRANSCOM order would work, or that the order would be a significant change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The sources said Hegseth misrepresented discussions with the president about Ukraine policy and aid deliveries, without going into detail.

Four other people said a small group of Pentagon staffers, many of whom had never held government office and who had opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine for years, advised Hegseth to consider ending aid to the country.

Two people denied that there had been a halt in aid. One described it as a logistical pause. One said:

“They just wanted to understand what was going on, and as a result, people misinterpreted it as, ‘You need to stop this.'”

The internal struggle has complicated policy decisions, the sources said. As Keith Kellogg and Steve Witkoff try to broker a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine, behind-the-scenes staffers have been pushing for the U.S. to end its support for Kyiv — a policy that has angered Ukrainian officials and forced European allies to fill the gap.

The publication notes that despite a short pause in February and a longer one that began in early March, the Trump administration has resumed sending the latest aid approved under President Joe Biden.

(C)UNIAN 2025