Around a week after Donald Trump began his second term as president, the United States Army ordered three cargo airlines that operated from the Dover Air Base, in Delaware, and from an American base in Qatar that stopped 11 flights loaded with artillery projectiles and another armament to Ukraine.
In a matter of hours, they arrived in Washington frantic questions of Ukrainians in kyiv and officials in Poland, where shipments were coordinated. Who ordered the transport of the United States, known as Transcom, stop flights? Was it a permanent pause of all help? Or only some?
High -ranking national security officials – from the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department – could not give answers. In a week, the flights were in the air again.
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The verbal order started from the Pete Hegseth office, the secretary of defense, according to Transcom records reviewed by Reuters.
The cancellations later occurred a meeting in the Oval Office on January 30 on Ukraine in which Hegesh and other high -ranking national security officials participated, three sources familiar with the situation said.
during the meeting, the idea of stopping the aid to Ukraine arose, two people said with knowledge of the meeting, but President Trump did not give any instruction to stop Ukraine aid.
The president did not know the order of Hegseth, like other high -ranking national security officials present at the meeting, according to two sources informed about private conversations in the White House and another with direct knowledge of the matter.
when he was asked to comment on this report, the White House told Reuters that Hegseth had followed a Trump directive to Pausar the aid to Ukraine, which, he said, was the position of the government at that time. He did not explain why, according to those who spoke with Reuters, national security officials in the normal decision -making process did not know about the order or why it was reversed so quickly.
“Negotiating the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine has been a complex and fluid situation. We are not going to detail each conversation between senior administration officials during the process,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokesman for the White House. “The conclusion is that the war is much closer to its end today than was when President Trump assumed the position.”
The order to suspend authorized military aid under the government of Joe Biden officially entered into force a month later, on March 4, with an advertisement from the White House.
The story of how flights were canceled, detailed by Reuters for the first time, points to a process of making policy sometimes disorderly within the Trump government and a command structure that is not clear even for high -ranking members.
The pause of several days of flights, confirmed by five people with knowledge of it, also shows confusion in the way in which the administration has created and implemented the national security policy.
In the Pentagon, the disorder is an open secret, and many officials and former officials affirm that the department is plagued by internal disagreements on foreign policy, deeply rooted grudges and inexperienced personnel.
Reuters could not establish exactly when the Hegseth office ordered to cancel load flights. Two sources said that Ukrainian and European officials began asking about the pause on February 2. The Transcom records indicate that there was a verbal order of the “SECDEF” – the Secretary of Defense – that stopped the flights and that they had resumed on February 5.
“This is consistent with the administration policy of acting quickly, breaking things and solving them later. That is their management philosophy,” said Mark Cancan, a retired officer of the Marines and an expert in defense of the group of experts Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“That is great for Silicon Valley. But when you are talking about institutions that have existed for hundreds of years, you will meet problems.”
The interruption of shipments caused consternation in kyiv.
The Ukrainians quickly asked the government through multiple channels, but had difficulty obtaining useful information, according to a Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the situation. In subsequent conversations with the Ukrainians, the administration labeled the “internal policy”, said the source. Ukrainian officials did not respond to comment requests.
The sending of American weapons to Ukraine requires the approval of several agencies and may take weeks or even months to complete, depending on the size of the cargo. Most of the American military aid goes through a logistics center in Poland before being collected by Ukrainian representatives and transported to the country.
This center can retain shipments for long periods of time. It is not clear if the 11 canceled flights were the only ones scheduled that week of February, how much help had already been stored in Poland and if it continued to arrive in Ukraine despite the Transcom orders.
The revelations arrive at a time of agitation in the department. Several of Hegesh’s main advisors were escorted outside the building on April 15 after being accused of unauthorized revelation of classified information.
The secretary is still the subject of scrutiny, even by the Congress, about his own communications. He has previously attributed the accusations of disorders to discontent employees.
The canceled flights contained weapons that had been approved by the administration of Joe Biden and authorized by the legislators of the Capitol.
Reuters could not determine whether Hegseth or his team knew how the order would develop to Transcom or that the order would mean a substantial change in American politics on Ukraine. Three sources familiar with the situation said that Hegseth misunderstood the conversations with the president about the policy regarding Ukraine and the help of help, without giving more details.
Four other people informed of the situation said that a small group of Pentagon officials, many of whom have never held a position in the Government and that for years they have demonstrated against US help to Ukraine, advised Hegseth to consider the possibility of interrupting the help of the country.
Two people familiar with the matter denied that there has been a true cut of help. One of them described him as a logistics pause.
“They just wanted to know what was happening and people misunderstood him as: ‘You have to stop everything,” said one of them.
With Reuters information
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