President Trump’s about-face on last week’s pause of some weapons shipments to Ukraine has revealed chasms within the administration, with the president claiming several times that he didn’t know who approved the halt.

Trump on Monday said he would restart the dispatch of defensive weapons to the country — to include air defense missiles — reasserting control from leading figures in the Defense Department who have sought to pivot the U.S. military away from Europe.

“We’re really starting to see the strains of the limits of the coordination amongst the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Conley said Trump’s ever-shifting policies, reduced personnel across agencies, and varying agendas of influential national security figures has “created this perfect storm” with Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth apparently moving out ahead of Trump on Ukraine lethal aid.

The original decision to hold off on the weapons to Kyiv was largely driven by Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, a close ally to Vice President Vance, and signed off on by Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg after it was discovered that the U.S. only has about 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors needed for all Defense Department military plans, The Guardian first reported.

Multiple outlets also have reported that Hegseth did not inform the White House or the State Department the pause was happening.

Trump’s reversal of the move, at least in part, also comes as he has ramped up criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Trump said Tuesday was “throwing bulls---” in talks about ending the war.

The result has been a scramble inside the........

© The Hill