Inside Washington’s Pro-Putin Push to Box Trump In

But this time, the ride won’t be easy.

It was not a surprise.

Not even remotely.

We’ve been told before that the stockpiles are running low—this is just the latest rerun of the same excuse.

As Politico reported yesterday, “the Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.” In other words, the U.S. is pulling back precisely what Ukraine needs most—and what Putin has been desperately hoping Washington would stop sending.

The decision, according to the report, was “driven by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby,” and came after a stockpile review “leading to concerns that the total number of artillery rounds, air defense missiles and precision munitions was sinking, according to three people familiar with the issue.”

Here’s what’s now being held back:

• Patriot air-defense missiles

• Artillery shells

• Hellfire and other air-to-surface missiles for Ukraine’s F-16s

Let’s not pretend this is just a Trump-era problem. The Biden administration has done it too. Every time Ukraine starts to gain the upper hand, Washington steps in—not to accelerate the advantage, but to slow it down, dial back the aid, or "rebalance" the battlefield just enough to help Putin close the gap.

Take ATACMS. For months, the Biden administration insisted they couldn’t send them because the stockpiles were low. That was the excuse. But after relentless pressure and public criticism, they finally caved—and sent may be 100 units. So here’s the obvious question: if they already knew in 2023 that the stockpiles were low, why didn’t they start building more?

It’s not like they lacked the funds. Congress handed the administration billions, including $64 billion in April 2024 alone. At roughly $1.5 million per missile, $1 billion would have bought 666 ATACMS missiles. That would’ve changed the equation. But of course, if they had done that, the Pentagon would lose its favorite excuse—"we don't have the stock."

And that’s the real point.

The stockpile excuse isn’t a constraint. It’s a strategy.

Former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz played the same game—citing low stocks to block Taurus deliveries while refusing to ramp up production. Are we seriously supposed to believe this was an independent decision? No. Too precise. Too synchronized. Someone passed the memo.

This isn’t just about denial—it’s about control. If the Pentagon can claim stockpiles are low, they can block shipments not just from the U.S., but from European allies too—even those willing to pay for the weapons and transfer them themselves.

And it’s no accident this “announcement” dropped this week.

During the recent NATO summit, Trump openly floated the idea of sending Patriot air-defense missiles to Ukraine. According to reports, Zelensky personally raised the issue with him. Maybe Trump was actually considering it.

At the same time, the national security faction within the House GOP was making its own move—drafting a bill that would demand the return of abducted Ukrainian children as a precondition for any negotiations with Russia.

The same demand is being pushed in the Senate as well—led by Senator Chuck Grassley and a small but determined group of lawmakers backing the resolution.

This isn’t really about whether the bill passes or not. That’s a side story. What matters is that the national security wing of the GOP is mobilizing—drawing a clear red line to prevent Trump from drifting any closer to the Kremlin.

Let us think about it strategically:

• If there’s no pressure on the administration to hold the line on sanctions, then it becomes easier to justify lifting them.

• If no one is actively confronting the Kremlin, then the path to cooperating with it becomes smoother. Silence creates permission.

That’s why it’s hard to see it as a coincidence that just 24 hours after Reps. Meeks and McCaul introduced their bipartisan resolution on the return of abducted Ukrainian children, the media suddenly learned that weapons shipments to Ukraine were being pulled back.

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The “Protect Putin at Any Cost” group inside Washington has clearly noticed that the national security wing of the GOP is gaining ground. So, they made their move—to hurt Ukraine and help the Kremlin hold the line on the battlefield.

Remember this line you were forced to issue back in March?

“There is no kill switch,” the Joint Program Office (JPO) for the F-35 program said in a statement. “The program operates under well-established agreements that ensure all F-35 operators have the necessary capabilities to sustain and operate their aircraft effectively. The strength of the F-35 program lies in its global partnership, and we remain committed to providing all users with the full functionality and support they require.”

That’s where you are now—just a few more bends before the full downhill slide.

Keep going.

Now—fortunately or not—the Republican administration doesn’t work like the Democratic one. It’s top-down. It has a single figure who places optics above all else. If the White House decides something, it gets enforced all the way down. Which is why I’m not ready to ring the alarm bells on Patriot shipments just yet.

Also, let’s be honest: no one wants American artillery shells anymore. Not even Ukraine. There’s a new, reliable, and more trusted partner in town—Germany.

So, dear Pentagon—take those shells, and you know exactly where to put them.

The biggest problem facing the pro-Putin lobby inside the Pentagon is simple: Putin is in serious trouble. This isn’t 2022. It’s not 2023. It’s not even 2024 anymore. The fallback options are gone. The extra money is gone. He’s now entering a phase of strategic scarcity.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is in the exact opposite position—more resourced than ever.

The U.S. intelligence community has no doubt mapped the trajectory already. They know what’s coming. And so does NATO. Just last month, Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told the Senate outright: Ukraine can win this war.

That was never the problem for the Biden team—they had space to hedge their bets on Putin “maybe not losing.” But Trump doesn’t have that luxury. He doesn’t play for maybes. He plays for optics. And if you’ve followed him long enough, you know—winning is the core of his identity.

That’s why he lied about never losing. That’s why he called Ted Cruz a fraud when Cruz beat him in the Iowa caucus back in 2016. He understands the optics of “winnability” at an instinctual level.

So if he starts to believe Putin is a loser—or even worse, if he thinks the probability of Putin losing has crossed the 50% mark (and it has)—then he’s going to think very hard about tying his future to a sinking regime.

Yes, there’s an ideological thread that links the MAGA wing of U.S. politics to the Kremlin—shared language, shared enemies, shared authoritarian fantasies. But that won’t override the one thing Donald Trump values more than anything else: winning.

And Putin no longer looks like a winner.

That’s why Europe shouldn’t panic. Don’t waste energy trying to decode the Pentagon’s latest excuse. Don’t burn time debating Pentagon’s hesitation or Trump’s instincts. Instead, deal with Trump directly. Keep pressing for the air-defense missiles Ukraine needs, and be prepared when the Pentagon finds some new "concern" to slow-roll the process again. They always do.

But here’s the deeper point. This entire episode only strengthens the case I’ve made repeatedly: Europe must shift its priorities. Air defense is important—but it’s reactive. It protects civilians. It buys time. But it doesn't change the trajectory of the war.

Air offense does.

Fighter jets, long-range missiles, deep strike capabilities—these are the tools that determine outcomes. Ukraine and its European allies need to invest far more energy, resources, and political capital into scaling offensive power. That’s what bends the battlefield.

Yes, keep pushing the Trump administration to release air-defense missiles. But don’t lose sight of the bigger play: equip Ukraine to finish the war. Force matters. Speed matters. And right now, the only way to break this cycle of delay, denial, and managed stalemate is to overwhelm it—with momentum, not negotiation.

If Europe wants to end this war on its own terms, it won’t happen by intercepting missiles. It will happen by bending the battlefield—with fighter jets, long-range missiles, and everything Ukraine needs to take the fight deep into Russian positions.

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