Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been chewed out by a major international ally.
The 46-year-old former Fox host was on the receiving end of a dig from the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, who claimed that he had been withholding vital munitions for a month as the bloody war in his country grinds on.
This year, the conflict between Kyiv and Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been focused on incessant aerial bombardments that have seen drones and missiles hurtle in both directions across the border, bound for infrastructure, military targets, and innocent people.
Ukraine is heavily reliant on Western-made interceptor missiles to defend itself from Russian ordnance, but its access to them has been hobbled by Washington, D.C.’s war with Iran and President Donald Trump’s fraught relationship with Zelensky.
In an update following a meeting with Cabinet members and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Zelensky said his government was working “with the United States, Europe, and other partners that have stocks of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles.
“In particular, we have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr. Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS. I instructed our team to raise this with the American side once again. Conversations with other countries are also ongoing.”
It comes less than 10 days after Zelensky suggested that Trump was trying to make Ukraine yield in the war, not Russia.
“I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I am not saying that this is the goal our partners are pursuing. I don’t want to think that our American partners believe the war… could be ended sooner at Ukraine’s expense. But that’s how it looks.”
The same outlet reported in the same article that the U.S. is currently only delivering 12 Patriot interceptors a month. That number was around four times higher under former President Joe Biden, under whom they were also free. Trump is making Ukraine pay.
Ukraine’s need for more ammunition for its air defenses comes after Trump tried and failed to broker what he called an “energy ceasefire” between the warring nations.
In the end, he was left humiliated, as he sought to lower the price of fossil fuels ahead of the midterms on November 3.
Trump declared the ceasefire in early October, and Zelensky said soon afterward that while it was news to him, his forces would respect it if the Kremlin’s did too.
Moscow stayed ominously silent on the matter before making it clear it had no intention of showing Trump any respect. It exploited Ukraine’s lack of air-defense munitions with strikes on military, logistical, and civilian targets around the country.
The devastating attack killed at least nine and left more than half a million without power, Al Jazeera reported.
Ukraine also claimed that it had struggled to gather intelligence about the attack, fearing that its allies may have withheld information. Officials said that Elon Musk’s Starlink was slowed around the time.
“Tonight SpaceX introduced a speed limit for the Starlink terminals in motion,” presidential adviser Sergiy Beskrestnov said at the time, according to the news site.
“Our defense forces were not warned about this restriction, which led to the disruption of a number of missions,” he added. “Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is linked to the current political situation.”
The service was resumed around four days later, on a night when Russian strikes killed two more people, according to the Guardian.
“It was blocked for some period of time. And then it was deblocked by the American side. We are very thankful for this. Now it works,” Zelensky told NBC’s Meet the Press. “Only [the] United States has this unique intelligence to tell our side when Russia uses ballistic missiles. And we didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days.”
“It was a message from [the] American government to limit the speed,” he said. “And technically, SpaceX did it.”
A Pentagon spokesperson said the U.S. was still supporting Ukraine.
“There has been no change to Department of War policy regarding any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine. The Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, through which NATO allies and partners provide commensurate contributions for U.S.-provided defense articles and services, continues unaltered.”
