The Trump administration is considering cutting off additional military aid to Ukraine following Friday’s dramatic Oval Office blowup between the president, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
President Trump was due to meet Monday with key officials — including national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — to discuss the prospect of letting European allies take over assisting Ukraine in its war against Russia, a source close to the White House told The Post.
“This is going to be part of a larger pivot away from conflicts in Europe and a pivot towards building alliances in Latin America and in the Western Hemisphere,” the source said, name-checking El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Argentina President Javier Milei, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado Parisca as potential beneficiaries.
At the White House Monday, Waltz pointedly told reporters that “we welcome the Europeans taking a lead in European security.”
“The American people’s patience is not unlimited, their wallets are not unlimited, and our stockpiles and munitions are not unlimited,” Waltz told Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” Monday.
“So the time to talk is now.”
Trump himself responded Monday morning on Truth Social to Zelensky’s statement that a peace settlement between Moscow and Kyiv is “very, very far away.”
“This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy [sic], and America will not put up with it for much longer!” the president said.
“It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy [sic], stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S. [sic] – Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?”
Tension between the US and Ukraine was still simmering Monday after the explosive Trump-Zelensky meeting that ended with the Ukrainian president being told to leave the White House without signing a long-awaited framework mineral deal.
Trump and Vance both called Zelensky “disrespectful” for trying to discuss security guarantees beyond the mineral deal, while Zelensky told Fox News anchor Bret Baier he was “not sure that we did something bad” by rebuking Vance in the meeting.
The Ukrainian president repeatedly said he would be willing to accept the minerals deal and would want to have more discussions with Trump, but the US president insisted Zelensky would have to want “peace” and not “fight.”
European leaders largely backed Zelensky over the weekend after the blowup, while Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Washington now “largely aligns” with the foreign policy vision of the Russian government.
On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a partial one-month truce between Ukraine and Russia — with combat operations in the air, at sea and against energy infrastructure to be suspended for that period.
“There will be no European troops on Ukrainian soil in the coming weeks,” Macron told French newspaper Le Figaro. “The question is how we use this time to try to obtain a truce, with negotiations that will take several weeks.”
France and the UK have already said they would be open to sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine after a peace deal is signed as a security backstop, something Trump has indicated he would not do.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Post.
