Russian missiles keep falling on Ukrainian cities while Washington holds up approval of Patriot interceptor transfers to Ukraine, according to The Washington Post. A Ukrainian official told the Post that only "a couple" of interceptors remained. President Donald Trump wants this war to end, and that goal deserves support. But a deal that squeezes only Ukraine is not a peace plan, and right now Kyiv absorbs the pressure while Moscow collects the relief.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged on Oct. 20 that a batch bought for Kyiv may not have been delivered, but he rejected any political motive. "There’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine," he said.

So is Washington protecting scarce supplies, applying negotiating pressure or both? Americans deserve an answer, including what concessions Washington expects from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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The administration’s strongest defense is scarcity, so start with the missiles. Lockheed Martin delivered 620 PAC-3 MSE interceptors in 2025 and plans to expand annual capacity to 2,000 over seven years.

The Iran war compounded the problem. A July assessment by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that heavy combat use had pushed American Patriot inventories below 1,000.

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A president must keep enough interceptors to protect American troops. Having worked on military strategy and security cooperation at the Pentagon, I take that obligation seriously. Ukraine’s needs cannot erase our responsibilities elsewhere.

European money does not change that math. Kiel Institute data covering the first half of 2026 identify Europe as the largest military-aid donor, yet American stockpiles supplied more than 90% of the aid delivered through NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). Europe is paying American industry to arm Ukraine, and Washington controls the tap.

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The lasting answer to scarcity is production. When U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Oct. 9, he pressed for faster Patriot production licensing and offered joint production of interceptors. Washington should pursue it, with technology safeguards.

Still, scarcity does not explain every pending decision, and Washington owes the allies who paid for these weapons a straight explanation. Nor does it explain the broader pressure on Kyiv.

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The clearest example involves the same pipeline. Reuters reports that Washington threatened to stop the allied-funded PURL weapons pipeline to press Kyiv to halt its deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. That is leverage over Ukrainian military operations, not proof of a coordinated campaign to remove Zelenskyy.

The satellite dispute is murkier. Blamed for throttling Ukraine’s terminals, billionaire Elon Musk posted that limits "are decided by the US military and ultimately" by the president. Reuters then traced the restriction to the White House through unnamed officials. Trump denied it. "It wasn’t us," he told reporters Oct. 16. Separately, Ukraine went three days without American missile warnings before Zelenskyy said Oct. 18 that intelligence sharing had resumed.

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The pressure is also personal. Trump called Oct. 10 for Ukraine to replace its president. Yet Zelenskyy sat down with American envoys in Oslo on Oct. 20. A leader who shows up for talks is not refusing diplomacy.

Now consider the other side of the ledger. Trump announced an energy ceasefire Oct. 11, although Russian agreement remained unclear. A week later, Russian strikes hit 28 substations and other energy facilities, according to the Institute for the Study of War, leaving roughly 550,000 Ukrainian households without power. Kyiv was pressed to stop hitting refineries while Moscow kept hitting the grid. Putin never confirmed the ceasefire, and his missiles show he never intended to honor it.

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Moscow, meanwhile, received relief. On Oct. 9, Treasury issued a license authorizing specified Russian diesel transactions. Reuters later reported that Washington hoped the diesel deal would soften Moscow’s negotiating position.

The administration’s case is domestic. Diesel hit a record $6.52 a gallon in September as the Iran war choked the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump promised relief for farmers, ranchers and truckers. But Lawfare’s analysis found the agreed Russian exports would cover about 2% of American demand. The price relief is speculative. Moscow’s gains are not: sanctions relief and American pressure on Kyiv to spare Russian refineries.

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Offering an adversary an incentive can be sound diplomacy. The question is what the incentive buys. So far, the bombing has not stopped.

Nor has softer treatment softened the Kremlin’s terms. When Zelenskyy offered a 60-day ceasefire to permit elections, the Kremlin rejected it on Oct. 12, saying it wanted an overall settlement. Moscow refused the very pause that Trump’s call for new Ukrainian leadership would require.

Putin’s ambitions run larger still. The New York Post reports that he wants a summit with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to settle the war without Zelenskyy or Europe at the table, a redux of Yalta.

Putin bargains as if time is on his side. The battlefield says otherwise. Reuters reported Oct. 17 that Russian advances had slowed and many front lines remained largely static.

That gives Washington room to demand reciprocity. Wicker, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, proposed one approach on Oct. 18: Ukrainian restraint against petroleum facilities in exchange for American targeting assistance against Russian missile launches. It deserves consideration. But Putin would still need to offer restraint of his own.

So what must Putin give up? As I argued in these pages last December, a durable agreement requires credible enforcement, and enforcement begins with concessions Moscow can be held to.

Russia must halt strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and cities, the same restraint Washington demanded of Kyiv. It must accept monitored ceasefire terms, defined restrictions on military activity and consequences for violations. It must negotiate with Kyiv, not over Kyiv’s head in China. And it must recognize that the size of Ukraine’s army and the choice of its security partners belong to Kyiv, not the Kremlin.

For his part, Trump should preserve American reserves, expand production, insist on European performance and refuse any summit that decides Ukraine’s fate without Ukraine. Diesel licenses and any further sanctions relief should depend on compliance, with automatic snap-back penalties if Moscow cheats.

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America need not send combat troops to Ukraine or finance an indefinite war to demand those safeguards.

Trump wants the killing to stop. Whether Putin will accept enforceable limits remains unproved. The test of American diplomacy is whether Moscow earns relief through compliance and faces greater costs for renewed aggression.

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