An order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office grounded 11 flights loaded with heavy artillery headed to Ukraine.
The problem? Nobody in the Pentagon, the State Department, Ukraine — or even the White House — knew anything about it.
According to an exclusive report from Reuters, the canceled flights sparked panicked communications from Ukraine and a scramble to get the planes in the air. A week later, the artillery was headed to the war-torn country, with an additional cost of $2.2 million, Reuters reported.
The report claims the grounding of the flights came from a verbal order from Hegseth’s office and followed a Jan. 30 Oval Office meeting at which Trump floated the idea of stopping Ukraine aid.
But no order to halt the aid was given and the president was completely unaware of Hegseth’s action, sources told Reuters — though the White House had a different take when contacted.
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“Asked to comment on this report, the White House told Reuters that Hegseth had followed a directive from Trump to pause aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration's position at the time. It did not explain why, according to those who spoke to Reuters, top national security officials in the normal decision-making process didn’t know about the order or why it was so swiftly reversed,” the report stated.
Records reviewed by Reuters showed the cancellations cost $2.2 million.
It “points to an at-times haphazard policy-making process within the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own ranking members,” the report stated.
“The multiday pause of the flights, confirmed by five people with knowledge of it, also shows confusion in how the administration has created and implemented national security policy.”