The administration of US President Donald Trump has given the green light to sell weapons to Ukraine through Direct Commercial Sales. The cost of the permit is only $50 million, but in this case, it seems, the precedent itself is more important. This decision regarding the transfer of weapons to Ukraine is made by the Trump administration for the first time since coming to power in January 2025.
KyivPost reports on the consent to DCS for Ukraine, citing its own sources. Defense Express notes that Direct Commercial Sales is quite different from another mechanism for selling weapons, which is much more widely known - Foreign Military Sales (FMS).
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FMS involves an intergovernmental agreement under which the US government sells American weapons to the customer. The US government itself purchases the necessary weapons from its own defense industry and sells them to another country. This mechanism is used for absolutely all significant arms sales as well as involves significant bureaucratic red tape with obtaining numerous approvals and permits from American institutions, which the US government conducts for itself.
In turn, Direct Commercial Sales involves a direct agreement between the arms manufacturer and the customer. At the same time, DCS can be, and usually is, a much faster mechanism for selling arms than FMS. It also takes place without traditional publicity, because it is no longer an intergovernmental agreement, but a commercial one with a private business.
It should be noted that not all weapons can be sold through the DCS mechanism. At least not now, as the Trump administration has announced a large-scale simplification of the rules and procedures for exporting arms. Unfortunately, the so-called FMS Only list currently contains a very wide range of weapons, covering not only all heavy weapons, but even means of electronic warfare as well as night vision devices.
According to official information from the US government dated March 2025, from 2015 to 2023, Ukraine purchased weapons worth $1.6 billion under the DCS mechanism. Of this, the most was spent on fire control equipment, laser equipment, imaging and guidance equipment - $339 million, personal protective equipment ($247 mln.) and ammunition ($232 mln.). In addition, the publication writes that Ukraine purchased barrels for M2 Browning machine guns using the same mechanism.
At present, apparently, the only option available to Ukraine is to purchase weapons from the US under commercial agreements. Because one way or another, American weapons, which are actively used by the Ukrainian Defense Forces, require spare parts, maintenance, and ammunition, which can mostly only be purchased in the United States.
That is why Ukraine should already be preparing for very high price tags for American weapons, as well as for very successful cases of cooperation with American defense companies based on compensation agreements, for example, as Poland managed to do.
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