Trump’s aid freeze won’t stop Russia - but it could make Ukraine’s refugee crisis permanent

4 March 2025, 14:53 | Updated: 4 March 2025, 16:08

By Olga Tokariuk

The US government's decision to stop all military aid to Ukraine will cause a new exodus of refugees and discourage those Ukrainians who are already abroad from returning to their home country.

The decision of Donald Trump’s administration to halt military aid to Ukraine, following the public berating of President Zelensky at the White House, will have catastrophic repercussions for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Even if Europe steps up its military support to Ukraine and sends all the weapons it has, it still won’t be able to replace the US in one crucial area: air defence. This means that in a matter of weeks big Ukrainian cities like Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv or Lviv will be exposed to devastating Russian missile attacks, which might cause mass civilian casualties.

Many of my friends from Kyiv – mothers with children who have fled abroad in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 – have since returned to Ukraine. They were reassured by the fact that Ukraine started to receive American-made Patriot air defence systems, which were able to provide sufficient cover for civilians in the big cities. Displaced people from southern and eastern Ukraine flocked to the big cities as they felt safer there.

To be honest, there still was a non-zero chance of being killed by a Russian missile or drone: four female members of the Bazylevych family (three daughters and a wife) were killed as a result of a Russian strike in Lviv last year. Most Russian missiles, however, were intercepted by the Ukrainian forces with the help of the US air defence systems.

Residents of Kyiv got used to the sounds of explosions, shaking the air almost every night as the battles in the sky raged on, and regularly started their day with a cup of coffee and thanks to Ukrainian air defence forces.

Now, without that air shield, Ukrainian civilians will be vulnerable to Russian missile attacks. Russia is able to manufacture large quantities of various types of missiles, including ballistic ones – and potential lifting of sanctions by the US will help it fund more weapons production. It is also getting missiles from Iran and North Korea.

Russia has repeatedly used them to strike civilian targets in the big Ukrainian cities, like the children’s hospital in Kyiv in July 2024. There are no reasons to believe it won’t do it again, especially knowing that Ukraine’s sky is not protected. Several such attacks, with dozens of casualties, would trigger panic in Ukraine, as people will feel there are no safe places in the country left. This would prompt a new exodus of refugees, to add to 7 million Ukrainians who have fled the country since 2022.

Ukrainian refugees in the UK, whom I interviewed for my Chatham House research paper, told me that sufficient air defense over their home region would be an important pre-condition for them to return to Ukraine. As emerges from my research, an improved security situation is the top priority for Ukrainian refugees’ return.

Now, as hope for more protection for Ukrainian skies is shattered and the country’s survival hangs in a balance, their intentions to return, already declining after three years of full-scale war, will surely drop even further.

By denying Ukraine weapons and air defence systems and forcing it to effectively surrender to Russia, the US administration is not bringing peace closer. Ukrainians will not accept living under Russian occupation. If they are denied the means to defend themselves, then nothing will stop the Russian army, encouraged by the lack of accountability, from grabbing more of Ukraine.

Ukrainians know – from the experience of Bucha and territories occupied since 2014 – that living under Russian yoke means torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, rape, militarization and forced re-education of children.

Ukrainian armed forces will continue resisting as long as they can, even if they have to do so with shovels, as Ukraine’s ex-foreign minister famously stated. But the halt of the US military aid will also bring a much bigger humanitarian catastrophe. Millions more would flee Ukraine to Europe (as the US has now stopped accepting Ukrainian refugees), and those Ukrainians who are currently abroad would permanently ditch their plans to return.

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Olga Tokariuk is an Academy Associate at Chatham House, based in London.

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