JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke by phone for nearly an hour today. Their conversation appeared to focus on the war in Ukraine. The call comes as the Trump administration says it is pausing the delivery of some U.S. weapons to Ukraine. For more, we're joined by NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre. Hi there.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Greg, any details yet on the call between Trump and Putin?
MYRE: Well, not a lot. The two leaders appeared to press their main points. Trump wants a ceasefire and a quick end to the war. Putin says he wants to address the root causes of the conflict. Now, this readout is actually coming from one of Putin's top aides. Trump has been stressing this position since he returned to the White House in January. And Ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire, but Russia keeps adding conditions, and there's no sign of a truce on the horizon. And when Putin uses the term root causes, he's referring to the Russian position that the West should stop arming Ukraine, that Ukraine should cede territory and it should never be allowed to join NATO. So it seems both leaders just restated their positions as the war grinds on.
SUMMERS: And as I understand, there's been another development this week, too. The Trump administration now says that it is pausing some military aid to Ukraine. So tell us what kind of impact that could have.
MYRE: Yeah. The administration says this includes a range of weapons, but Juana, there's one in particular that's extremely important. It's the missiles used by the Patriot air defense system. These missiles are used to shoot down the incoming Russian ballistic missiles, and there's really no substitute. The Patriot is a U.S. system, and only the U.S. makes the missiles that go with them.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Sean Parnell said yesterday, this is part of a worldwide review of U.S. military assistance. He says the U.S. has to make sure its own stocks don't dwindle too low. So this could affect a lot of countries, but the most immediate impact could be Ukraine, which has depended heavily on the U.S. throughout the war.
SUMMERS: Now, you've been covering this for a while. I know that in the past few years, the fighting in Ukraine has intensified over the summer. Are we seeing that now?
MYRE: Yeah, the air war in particular. For much of the past three years, the Russians might fire a few dozen drones and ballistic missiles overnight. In the past couple months, that number has often soared into the hundreds per night. Last weekend, the Russians fired almost 500 drones in a single night and more than 50 ballistic and cruise missiles.
Now, Ukraine shoots down or electronically jams most of these drones, but the missiles are the real problem. Ukraine has this small and dwindling number of air defense missiles, and these limited supplies guard key military locations and government sites. Russia tries to exploit this vulnerability in several ways. It's now making more of its own drones so it can fire more. And it consistently targets these civilian areas like apartment buildings that just have little or no protection.
SUMMERS: Greg, I want to end by going back to that U.S. weapons pause for a second. The U.S. has been the leading supplier. So does that leave Ukraine with any other options?
MYRE: Well, some, but they're limited. The Europeans are trying to do more, but it's still pretty piecemeal. Some weapons here, some vehicles there. One good example is a 155-millimeter artillery shell. It's absolutely critical in the ground fighting. And this is one of the weapons the U.S. is pausing, and the Europeans just aren't making enough. Now, Ukraine is making more of its own weapons. The greatest success has been with drones. They make a large number of very effective drones, but it's only one weapon, and they need many others.
And Juana, one final note. Trump, as we know, can be very unpredictable, and he's often stated his opposition to more aid for Ukraine. But just last week he met Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in the Netherlands, and then he said he was actually open to the possibility of selling weapons to Ukraine.
SUMMERS: NPR's Greg Myre, thanks for the update.
MYRE: Sure thing.
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