US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has halted the delivery of weapons to Ukraine despite a military analysis that said the aid would not jeopardize US combat capability, NBC News reported.
The suspension of military aid to Ukraine was a unilateral move by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to three congressman aides and a former US official familiar with the matter, the media reported. It was the third time Hegseth has halted aid to Ukraine on his own initiative, and on the previous two occasions, in February and May, his actions were reversed within days.
The US Department of Defense suspended the delivery of US weapons to Ukraine this week over concerns, officials said, about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officials showed that the aid package would not jeopardize the US military's own ammunition supply, according to three US officials and sources.
The decision to halt the arms shipments caught the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies by surprise. Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aid to Ukraine in its fight against russia, and the top House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous for the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify cutting aid when the real reason was likely simply to pursue an agenda to cut US aid to Ukraine.
"We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we've been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict," Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Smith said his staff had "seen the numbers" and, without going into detail, saw no signs of a shortfall that would justify withholding aid to Ukraine.
The White House defended the decision, saying it was the result of a review by the Defense Department of US assistance to allies and partners abroad that began last month. The review began after Hegseth issued a memo directing the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff to conduct a stockpile review of all munitions, and the assessment found that some precision-guided munitions were at lower levels but not yet above critical minimums, leading the Joint Chiefs of Staff to conclude that continuing aid to Ukraine would not reduce US supplies below the threshold needed to maintain combat readiness.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the assessment an "capability review" at a briefing on Wednesday.
"We can't give weapons to everybody all around the world," Parnell said. "Part of our job is to give the president a framework that he can use to evaluate how many munitions we have where we're sending them. And that review process is happening right now and is ongoing," he said.
Recall, on July 2, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told NBC News that the United States had decided to stop the delivery of some weapons to Ukraine.
The Financial Times reported that some shipments of military aid from the United States were stopped on their way to Ukraine, citing Washington's concerns about its dwindling weapons stockpiles and its own military readiness.
Who we are: About us, Contacts. How we write news and our principles: Editorial code. We did our best. If you found this valuable – please support us.
To request a correction, please send an email.