‘Most shameful moment in US history’: Ukraine reels as Trump pulls support

Ukrainians fear the worst, saying Russia is set to gain from the US president’s move to pause military aid.

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Kyiv, Ukraine – Zynaida Shelepenko is still reeling about what happened in the White House on Friday.

“They cornered Zelenskyy like two bandits, like two mafiosi who want your money and your humiliation,” the 52-year-old bank clerk told Al Jazeera, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Therefore, Shelepenko said, she was not surprised with Trump’s Monday night decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine after Zelenskyy refused to apologise for the spat and said his aborted visit to Washington, DC, “didn’t bring anything positive”.

The Ukrainian president and his US counterpart have since struck more conciliatory tones, but to Shelepenko, there is a clear winner from these tensions between Washington and Kyiv, which until Trump came to power were close allies.

“Guess who’s cheering now? The vampire, the killer of children in the Kremlin,” she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We saw the most shameful moment in American history.”

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If the US aid is stopped altogether, the move will entail “great financial and legal problems” for US arms manufacturers such as Lockheed that have been commissioned to produce weaponry for Kyiv, said military analyst Mykhailo Zhirokhov, who is based in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv.

Washington may also stop providing intelligence data to Ukraine, including crucial, real-time information from military satellites, and stop training Ukrainian pilots and other servicemen to operate F-16 fighter jets and advanced weaponry, he said.

“This would be the worst-case scenario,” Zhirokhov told Al Jazeera.

The best-case scenario would be a diplomatic solution reached within several months before Kyiv runs out of the weapons and ammunition that have already been delivered, he said.

The halt will significantly affect Ukraine’s air defence capabilities, especially in large cities such as Kyiv and Odesa, where advanced, US-made Patriot systems are stationed.

Even though the systems and missiles have been supplied by Germany and Israel, the missiles are manufactured only in the US and each costs several million dollars.

Patriots have proved to be the most effective and far-reaching weapon against most Russian cruise and ballistic missiles – even the ones Putin has termed as indestructible.

There will also be a dire shortage of missiles for the HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and Western-supplied F-16 jets, Zhirokhov said.

Despite Trump’s reputation for being chaotic and unpredictable, his decision has an underlying geopolitical motive, according to Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych.

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Trump sees Ukraine as an obstacle in a brewing confrontation with ascending China over global dominance.

By cajoling Moscow and lifting US sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine, Trump wants Putin to side with Washington and “drag [Moscow] as far as possible” from China, Tyshkevych said.

“Trump thinks he has to do it fast,” he told Al Jazeera. “To him, it’s of paramount importance to finish pressuring Ukraine so that it agrees to concessions to Russia and to a ceasefire.”

Zelenskyy, left, meets Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, February 28, 2025 [Brian Snyder/Reuters]

To a history teacher-turned-soldier, Trump’s plan resembles the 18th-century partitions of Poland between Russia, Austria and Prussia.

At the time, Poland included most of what is now western and central Ukraine and was in an alliance with Lithuania. The partitions were partly caused by the Polish parliament’s cumbersome voting system, where each aristocrat had veto power and could stall decisions on the most problematic issues for months.

“Their parliament spent too much time on debates, while Russia and the Germans were improving their armies,” Anatoly, a 37-year-old serviceman recovering from contusions at a hospital in central Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

“Unfortunately, Ukraine too spent too much time on debates, on the destruction of [Soviet-era] weaponry and on the minimisation of armed forces, while [expletive] Putin waged wars in Chechnya and Georgia and restructured his army,” said Anatoly, who withheld his last name in accordance with wartime protocol.

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In the early 1990s, Kyiv gave up its entire Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, the world’s third-largest, in return for security guarantees from four nuclear powers – Russia, the US, France and the United Kingdom.

Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, the West also funded the destruction of conventional Soviet-era weapons such as tanks, artillery and shells, while Kyiv transferred its heavy bombers to Moscow as payment for natural gas supplies.

However, the spat in Washington, DC benefits all sides, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University.

Trump got rid of commitments worth tens of billions of dollars and will potentially help US arms manufacturers earn billions on weapons the European Union will commission for Kyiv, he said.

“Trump paid for it by being called names in the Northern Hemisphere. Well, he got used to that,” Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.

Zelenskyy gained the most by reviving his fading image of a tireless, fearless hero, Mitrokhin said.

Zelenskyy will get a lot more Western – mostly European – military aid, while what seems like a Gordian knot actually helped shift the EU’s position towards defending Ukraine instead of empty declarations, he said.

Rescuers and medical workers evacuate a patient from a hospital hit by a Russian drone strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 1, 2025 [Sofiia Gatilova/Reuters]

“Moreover, Zelenskyy doesn’t have to sign the deal on the real US control over funds for arming and rebuilding Ukraine, and a full lack of external control over his work is what every top Ukrainian official dreams about,” Mitrokhin said.

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Zelenskyy will not have to conduct a presidential vote as his armed forces managed to prevent the fall of the key eastern city of Pokrovsk and even counterattacked on the eastern front, he said.

Meanwhile, anti-Trump politicians in the UK, France, Canada and Germany seeking a stronger NATO without Washington feel emboldened.

“This scandal is a political gift to them,” Mitrokhin said.

Even Putin will reap political gains, as “Trump will be a more active friend without being burdened by Ukraine”, he said.

But the overall perspective is pessimistic.

“The whole picture reminds one about the beginning of World War I, when everyone wanted to fight and everyone was building alliances,” he concluded.

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