By Lara Seligman and Michael R. Gordon

Ukraine's supporters will set up a new NATO holding account to allow allies to buy billions of dollars of U.S. weapons for Ukraine, part of President Trump's latest scheme to arm Kyiv, according to three Western officials.

The creation of the new account marks the first tangible step in making Trump's vow to have North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies pay for U.S. weapons for Ukraine a reality. Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced the deal last month but didn't provide details.

"We've made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they're going to be paying for them," Trump said, sitting next to Rutte in the Oval Office in July. "We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it, and they're going to be paying for it."

The decision is a policy shift for the U.S., which under President Joe Biden donated weapons from its own inventories to Ukraine. The end goal is to get Russia to the negotiating table and end the conflict, according to a senior NATO military official.

The idea is for NATO allies to voluntarily donate funds into the new account, the three people said. The Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, will be responsible for vetting Ukraine's weapons requirements. The money in the account will be used to pay for American-made or supplied weapons sent to Kyiv after Ukraine's battlefield demands are balanced against the U.S. military's needs.

Ukraine's supporters aim to initially spend a total of $10 billion on weapons for Ukraine, one of the people said, most of which are expected to come from U.S. defense industry production lines.

Trump has $3.85 billion left over in presidential drawdown authority from the Biden administration to send weapons to Ukraine directly from U.S. stockpiles. The Republican chairmen of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees have proposed legislation that would enable the Pentagon to be reimbursed by European nations for any arms that might be provided.

Deliveries of American weapons to Kyiv that were authorized by the Biden administration are still flowing across the border from Poland. Some of those weapons -- primarily munitions like Patriot air-defense interceptors -- were paused in June as part of a Pentagon review of U.S. munitions stockpiles. But those deliveries have since resumed, officials said.

As part of the effort to arm Ukraine, the U.S. struck an agreement with Berlin under which Germany would send additional Patriot air-defense systems to Kyiv. Ukraine is set to receive the first two of these systems in the coming days, the German government announced Friday. In exchange, Germany will be the first nation to receive the newest Patriot systems off the U.S. production line at "an accelerated pace," according to a release from the German government.

To facilitate this agreement, the Pentagon moved Germany ahead of Switzerland in the queue for the next Patriots, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The U.S. plans to reshuffle future Patriot deliveries as additional countries sign on to send the systems from their arsenals to Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 01, 2025 16:45 ET (20:45 GMT)

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