Biden team races to send final $6B in aid to Ukraine before Trump takes office
The Biden administration is reportedly working to expedite the remaining $6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, aiming to send out the last of the weapons and munitions before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Inauguration Day.
The plan, described by two administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, is the only option the White House has to keep sending equipment to Ukraine to fight off continued Russian offensives, News.Az reports, citing POLITICO.But the problems are immense. It normally takes months for munitions and equipment to get to Ukraine after an aid package is announced, so anything rolled out in the coming weeks would likely not fully arrive until well into the Trump administration, and the next commander in chief could halt the shipments before they’re on the ground.
One big holdup to pushing that aid out the door quickly is that the U.S. can only send equipment already on its shelves. While the money allocated reimburses the Pentagon for that equipment, it is dependent on how fast new artillery shells and weapons can be produced or contracted to replace them.
“We have been sending whatever industry can produce each month, but the problem is you can only send these things as they are produced,” said Mark Cancian, a former DOD budget official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The administration could dip into the stockpiles and send equipment more quickly, but it’s unclear the Pentagon would want to do that since it would affect its own readiness.”
The Pentagon will remain “on track to continue to provide the authorized assistance to support Ukraine,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz said. “We expect to have further assistance in the coming weeks.”
The money remaining from April’s $61 billion Ukraine aid package is tied up in two buckets. There is $4.3 billion to pull existing stocks and $2.1 billion in funding to put weapons on contract with U.S. defense companies.
During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington in September, Biden directed the Pentagon to allocate the remainder of the military aid that had been appropriated for Ukraine by Congress before the end of his term. That included plans to parcel out the remaining Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds, money that the government can use to put weapons in production for Ukraine instead of buying them off the shelf, by the end of 2024.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have criticized the Biden administration for spending billions on military aid for Ukraine, with all of Europe collectively only managing to equal the amount Washington has made available. European leaders have said they need to do more for the country and will likely see Trump’s election as a forcing function to invest more heavily in their own defense and offer more support for Ukraine, if their own internal politics allows.
Trump’s criticism of support for the Ukrainian war effort also led allies to finally seize about $48 billion in interest from frozen Russian assets to give to Ukraine as loans for reconstruction and buying weapons. The Biden administration has pledged about $20 billion in loans for Kyiv out of that fund, but the fate of that pledge, like so much else, is now up in the air.
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