Europe has begun buying American weapons for Ukraine in earnest, only weeks after President Trump struck a deal with NATO allies to do so.
The latest sale, announced by the State Department on Thursday, will send 3,500 extended-range cruise missiles and GPS navigation kits to Ukraine once Congress formally approves it, as expected. They cost $825 million, paid for by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, with some unspecified financial assistance from the Pentagon.
The missiles can be fired from fighter jets, and have a similar range to the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles that Ukraine has used to strike Crimea and into Russia.
The sale marks one of the first purchases by European countries on behalf of Ukraine since Mr. Trump and other NATO leaders reached the deal. It is a policy shift for the United States, which had provided about $67 billion worth of weapons and other military aid directly to Ukraine during the Biden administration.
It will also offer a financial windfall for American weapons producers while shielding Mr. Trump — who has expressed skepticism of devoting U.S. military support to Ukraine — from accusations of direct involvement in the war.
“It’s not a game changer for Ukraine’s Air Force, but it might signal that there’s a productive conversation between Europeans and the Trump administration, in terms of future supply of modern equipment to Ukraine,” said Rafael Loss, a defense and security expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Last month, President Trump said European allies had agreed to buy American-made weapons for Ukraine under a deal clinched with the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte. Previously, the Biden administration had sent new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, from air defenses and tanks to ammunition, every few weeks since the start of the war. That included a period when supplies began to run out in 2023 during a 119-day debate in a Republican-led Congress over whether to continue the paying for them.
Some of the military aid committed to Ukraine under the Biden administration was still in the pipeline when Mr. Trump took office. He has paused and restarted the weapons flow several times, and said in July that Ukraine needed additional American military aid — although he did not say how much — to defend itself from a ferocious uptick in Russian attacks.
A week later, he announced the agreement to sell the weapons to European allies, who then would pass them on to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has sought to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, but his effort has largely stalled since his high-profile meetings this month with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska and, days later, with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and European leaders in Washington.
Steve Witkoff, who serves as Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Russia, was set to meet with senior Ukrainian officials in New York on Friday to discuss a way forward.
Russia has continued to pound Ukraine with airstrikes, including a barrage on Thursday that killed at least 23 people in Kyiv, the capital, including four children. The U.N. Security Council was expected to meet Friday to discuss the attacks.
Speaking to reporters on Friday in Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky expressed his desire to intensify discussions about security guarantees that Western partners can provide to postwar Ukraine to deter further Russian aggression. He said the discussions, which have taken place between top government officials and advisers, should be elevated to country leaders. He also said he hoped the legislatures of Ukraine’s allies would ratify any eventual agreed-upon guarantees to make them legally binding.
Earlier this month, the Netherlands pledged to pay for an initial $500 million package of American equipment and munitions that Ukraine said it urgently needed. The next day, Denmark, Norway and Sweden said they would finance another $500 million package of U.S.-made materiel for Ukraine.
It was not clear if the cruise missiles that were announced this week were part of either package. The missiles can be fired from the F-16 fighter jets that Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway are giving to Ukraine. Belgium is also poised to send a first shipment of the fighter jets soon.
Germany also recently pledged a big donation to Ukraine: two more Patriot air defense systems that fire missiles to intercept incoming projectiles. As part of the deal with Mr. Trump, Germany will receive priority to buy new Patriots from the United States. The systems cost about $1 billion each and can take years to build.
Ukraine is buying some military aid directly from the United States. The purchases include more than $200 million in equipment and support for howitzer guns and transportation services this month, and about $322 million in parts for Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in July.
Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Lara Jakes, a Times reporter based in Rome, reports on conflict and diplomacy, with a focus on weapons and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years.
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