US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will not attend the next top-level Ukraine support planning conference next week, a move that will leave the main Western nation forum for coordinating military and security support to Ukraine without the Pentagon’s director in attendance for the very first time, the US-based Defense News magazine reported Thursday.
The talks planning production and delivery of arms, training, and military intelligence for Ukraine will be jointly chaired by Germany and Britain. Whether or not a low-level US Defense Department representative will be present at a scheduled April 11 gathering of senior defense officials from 50 countries in Brussels isn’t clear, the report said.
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Britain took over chairmanship of the planning meetings, called the Ukrainian Defense Coordination Group (UDCG), from the US for the first time in February. Hegseth, both before and after his appointment as defense secretary, said that money spent by the US to support Ukraine to defend itself was, in his view, mostly wasted.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion, the UDCG, in 26 meetings to date, allocated some $126 billion in security and military aid to Ukraine, with mostly NATO states collectively contributing slightly more than half of that and the US the remainder. European financial assistance to Ukraine delivered and promised is about two-and-a-half times greater than the US’s, data compiled by the Kiel Research Institute said.
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The Defense Express report of US plans to skip, or, at maximum, send a low-level representative to a UDCG planning meeting came on the heels of an April 2 European Union announcement that it would, as scheduled, disburse a third payment of nearly €3.5 billion ($3.8 billion) to Ukraine as fiscal support.
The European funds, in a mix of grants and loans, assist Ukraine’s cash-strapped wartime government with financing for repair to damage caused by Russian air, drone, and missile strikes, upgrades to Ukrainian infrastructure, and salaries for government employees doing that and other work.
The money is paid through a European Commission fund called the Ukraine Facility, which allocates up to €50 billion ($54.8 billion) from 2024 to 2027 to Ukraine for financial and stabilization support.
US support to Ukraine has been unstable and sometimes fractious, with no American heavy weapons delivered by the US to Ukraine until the third month of the full-scale war, and a total embargo of US military support to Ukraine from December 2023 to May 2024 because of a Congressional budgetary impasse.
The most recent Washington halt of support to Kyiv took place in March 2025 following a Feb. 28 public argument in the White House between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance about Ukraine’s purported insufficient gratitude to the US. Washington cut off military intelligence feeds to Kyiv as well, rendering some US-made high-tech weapons deployed by the Ukrainian military to battle ineffective.
Zelensky, in March 28 comments, said European financial support to Ukraine’s government is being paralleled by expanded access for Ukraine to EU military intelligence, military depots, and licenses for production of air defense systems.
“This was a European initiative. It will be expanded. Ukraine will have greater access to intelligence information. And to certain associated technologies for that our European colleagues have available. We’ve also agreed with some of our European colleagues for access to their military arsenals for munitions. And we agreed on licenses for the production of air defense systems. And also, we will work [produce] several types of [European] artillery under license. And we have agreed about the production in Ukraine of several types of military drones and missiles,” Zelensky said in March 28 comments.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, in Thursday comments to Warsaw media, said the alliance currently provides more than half of Ukraine’s artillery ammunition, about two million shells of all types, and that the trading group was moving ahead with plans to accelerate production.
Kallas, on March 17, proposed an urgent military aid package that would deliver to Ukraine weapons, ammunition, and other types of assistance worth €40 billion ($44 billion). The initiative is widely supported across the trading group, she said.
“First, on Ukraine, there is broad political support for a defense initiative of €40 billion. Of course, right now the discussion is in the details,” Kallas said in comments reported by Brussels media. “Everybody understood around the table that we should really show our resolve right now and support Ukraine so that they can defend themselves.”
Along with EU-managed Ukraine assistance, individual Atlantic Alliance member states have moved independently to fill an expected end of American weapons deliveries to Kyiv as well.
Officials in new NATO member Sweden, on March 26, said Stockholm will transfer 16.5 billion kronor ($1.7 billion) worth of military equipment and materiel to Ukraine in 2025.
Hegseth’s Swedish counterpart, Pål Jonson, in comments to local media, said that $465 million of that money would go to the multinational Ukraine Defense Contact Group to finance purchases of arms and military support for Ukraine. The support package also includes Swedish Armed Forces materiel and spare parts worth $93 million, as well as M/58 machine guns, ammunition, 100 vehicles of various types, and air base maintenance equipment. At least $46 million will be for direct purchases of Swedish military manufactures for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Jonson said.
Swedish military kit is highly rated by AFU service personnel. Best known is Sweden’s CV-90 infantry fighting vehicle, an armored personnel carrier popular because of its powerful cannon, excellent sensors, good cross-country ability, and rugged armor giving good crew protection. BAE Systems AB’s Archer semi-automatic self-propelled howitzer and the Saab-Bofors NLAW guided anti-tank missile are also well-known in the Ukrainian Armed Forces (ZSU) for reliability and lethality.
Initially, a very hesitant Ukraine supporter, only willing to send protective helmets and first-aid kits, Germany by mid-2024 had become Ukraine’s biggest supplier of arms and weaponry after the US. Berlin’s assistance plan for 2025 more than doubled the total value of deliveries and assistance sent to Ukraine by Germany ($4.5 billion) from 2022-2024, a Zelensky Presidential office statement said.
On Monday, German officials announced Ukraine would receive some $3.3 billion worth of military support over 2025. The assistance, made public following meetings between Zelensky and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Kyiv, will include arms categories Zelensky has called critical for national defense since the war’s start: air defense systems and munitions and artillery ammunition.
Some Ukrainian military media have speculated that Baerbock’s and Zelensky’s comments about air defense systems in late March could mean Ukraine had received a green light to develop production of Germany’s IRIS-T anti-aircraft missiles and possibly launch systems, but there was no outside confirmation. IRIS-T is a high-tech, short- to medium-range weapon that has performed well against incoming Russian legacy manned aircraft, drones and cruise missiles.
According to German Defense Ministry statements, Germany has supplied 11 IRIS-T systems to Ukraine and plans to deliver up to 17 more systems once they are manufactured.
In January, Germany and Ukraine signed an agreement for the delivery of six new IRIS-T systems to Ukraine in 2025, along with 13 Gepard anti-aircraft cannon and ammunition, 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 22 Leopard 1A5 tanks, and an unspecified quantity of Germany’s latest RCH-155 howitzer, the Ukrainian military information publication Defense Express reported.