Why Is Trump Resuming Ukraine Arms Shipments?

AlArabiya English

How does the resumption of US weapon shipments to #Ukraine fit into Trump’s broader diplomatic strategy? Correspondent Toni Waterman explains.  #Trump

Transcript

00:00Now, the big news in the last couple of hours, Tony, the resumption of U.S. weapon shipments

00:04into Ukraine as well. How is that going to fit into this broader diplomatic strategy that we're

00:10seeing from the Trump administration? Well, it's a really interesting announcement that

00:14the president has made and really points to his frustrations with Russia at this point.

00:19So the way that this is going to work, which is different from what we have seen,

00:23obviously under the Biden administration, but even before he made this announcement,

00:28is that these weapons are not going directly to Ukraine. They are instead going to be sold

00:34at 100 percent value, according to the president, to NATO. And then NATO is going to distribute

00:41these weapons to Ukraine. So that is a departure in the way that it has happened before. Also,

00:48I mean, it's almost a 180 that we're seeing from Donald Trump here. A lot of his MAGA base when he

00:52was campaigning had talked quite repeatedly about not wanting to supply Ukraine with any more

01:00military equipment, with any more funding, that this should really be an America first type of

01:05presidency. And the president himself is a well-known non-interventionist. So the fact that he is willing

01:12to resume these shipments, perhaps because they are going to be paid for instead of donated.

01:17But the fact that he's willing to do that, perhaps, is, again, this indication that he really wants

01:22to get Putin to the negotiating table. The president campaigned on bringing this war to an end within

01:28the first 24 hours of his presidency. But in reality, he's found that much, much more difficult to achieve.

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