Strategic genius if you ask me. Putin has lured not only NATO but also other adversarial liberal democracies, such as Japan and Australia, to involuntarily divest themselves of their obsolete, surplus military equipment. Now what are these countries supposed to do in the event of war? Replace those stockpiles with state-of-the-art gear? Ha!
This is positive. Don’t know the size of the sale but I believe Zalinskyy wanted to purchase $50B of weapons/equipment. U.S. President Trump approves first $50M arms sale to Ukraine
It looks like Trump is telling Ukraine that as long as they are willing to buy weapons, the US is open for business in terms of FMS. The Ukrainians have been famous for not wanting to buy anything but instead wanting things donated. As long as we can arrange financing for them, this is good news.
This seems to be a change from Trump as his initial response to Zelenskyy’s request to purchase was to essentially say “no” without uttering the word.
I think that was part of the outreach to Putin to get him to the negotiating table. Now that Putin has shown he is not interested, it is game on.