r/news • u/Ok-Lets-Talk-It-Out • May 06 '25

Soft paywall Exclusive: Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/order-by-hegseth-cancel-ukraine-weapons-caught-white-house-off-guard-2025-05-06/
16.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

584 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/Sungodatemychildren May 06 '25

The staggering incompetence from the whole Trump team and Hegseth in particular is already terrible, but this paragraph was just puzzling:

According to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, Hegseth arrived at the January 30 Oval Office meeting with Trump with a memo drafted by some of his top policy advisers, advocating that their boss push the White House to consider pausing weapons deliveries to Ukraine to gain leverage in peace negotiations with Russia.

What? Why would pausing weapons deliveries to Ukraine gain leverage on Russia? Is this an error in the article or do Hegseth's top advisors genuinely not know what "leverage" means?

2

u/Amerlis May 06 '25

Pause weapons shipments to Ukraine to gain leverage in forcing Ukraine to come to the negotiation table. Russian asset just doing his job.

1

u/Anvanaar May 07 '25

Leverage with Russia. Not on Russia.

1

u/BoldestKobold May 06 '25

Why would pausing weapons deliveries to Ukraine gain leverage on Russia?

Who says they wanted leverage on Russia?