Over six months of deadlock in the US Congress, passing new aid legislation for Ukraine, is likely coming to an end this week.
Both sides of American politics, including Trumpists, have declared a consensus for providing quick assistance to Ukraine for the first time. The process is likely to move forward this week. No one can guarantee though that the situation will not repeat itself.
Read more about whether the White House has more stable alternative ways to provide assistance to Ukraine in an article by Marianna Fakhurdinova, Associate Research Fellow at the New Europe Center – Three ways and one obstacle: how US can provide military assistance to Ukraine’s Armed Forces even without a budget.
In 2022, the US Congress approved over $80 billion in military, financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine through four supplementary funding acts – Ukraine Supplemental Appropriation Acts.
These funds are managed by a dozen US agencies to provide assistance to Ukraine through various programmes.
According to Congress, military aid provided to Ukraine through various instruments and programmes since the full-scale war, i.e., for 2022-2023, has exceeded $48 billion, making the United States Ukraine’s number one military donor.
But not all the weaponry for the Armed Forces of Ukraine has reached Ukraine.
The thing is that assistance is provided in two ways: direct supply of existing weapons and manufacturing new weapons for Ukraine.
The first approach is supplying existing weapons.
Since 24 February 2024, President Joe Biden’s administration has sent weapons worth $20 billion to Ukraine. $1.6 billion burned because they were not used in the 2022 fiscal year. About $4 billion remain unused.
The second approach is manufacturing and purchasing new, as well as repairing and maintaining old weapons for Ukraine in the United States.
In 2022, Congress allocated about $19 billion for this under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). $12 billion has been spent: the US Department of Defense has contracted manufacturers for this amount to produce weapons for Ukraine. It is also known that $6.6 billion has not even been contracted yet.
Finally, Ukraine has access to the Foreign Military Financing programme – grant aid for purchasing old American weapons or ammunition. It allows Kyiv to choose which weapons to procure. The programme though has a very limited budget ($1.6 billion for Ukraine), and almost all the funds have been exhausted.
To sum up, the administration still has the authority to provide Ukraine with $4 billion in weapons, but allegedly, the Pentagon has run out of real funds to procure weapons for replacement.
However, the White House and the Pentagon should show their political will to meet the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army. Because $4 billion for Ukraine is only 0.5% of the annual Pentagon budget. So they are hardly critical to US national security.
Moreover, there is a mechanism (Excess Defense Articles, EDA programme) through which the Pentagon can transfer military property no longer needed by the American army to allied and friendly countries.
For Ukraine, such a mechanism of transferring weapons could be a lifesaver. However, using the EDA programme for Ukraine has its drawbacks.
Another option is to use the assets of the Russian Central Bank, frozen in the EU and the United States in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion.
The United States can already help use some of the frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine, encouraging European partners to be more decisive in this direction.
So even without the adoption of a new US financial package, there are three alternative options in the short and medium term to back Ukraine bypassing Congress.
© 2024 Ukrainska Pravda
Sure, the US president ain’t powerless. Not only could he use the EDA, Foreign Military Financing and various foreign assistance programs, USAid and probably other executive measures to directly support Ukraine, he could use the same ways to indirectly send assistance through Nato countries as middlemen. But Biden hasn’t chosen to exploit the full range of possibilities yet, so he apparently doesn’t want to (or else he’s very much incompetent). The disturbing conclusion is rather obvious: Biden doesn’t want Ukraine to win, he prefers a negotiated peace with more territorial gains for RuSSia.
☹
Ukraine could survive without Crimea, but cannot survive without Donbas. Donyetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Mariupol must be liberated asap.
It’s up to Ukrainians to decide.
After so much bloodshed and the irreplaceable loss of their finest men and women, it’s doubtful that they would ever be minded to give anything to a genocidal nazi regime.
Even if they did such a deal, can you imagine the survivors of Mariupol having to live not only almost next door to savages, but also very close to a constantly threatening peninsula that is bristling with weaponry, orcs, missiles and fuck knows what else?
All thieved lands must come back.
Ukrainians are pragmatic people. There is one concession they might make with Putler’s replacement: the forfeit of the right to reparations.
Reparations would have to be recovered the long way: 50-100 years of sanctions and import duties.
I suggested months ago that the EU ahold just pay the USA the $62 billion as a commercial transaction.
Can’t see why not.
I ‘voiced’ the same idea in comments here, Scradge, though not to the tune of 62 billions. The EU shouldn’t buy all the scrap metal the Pentagon likes to get rid of, just the essential supplies that Ukraine urgently needs (shells, Himars, Patriot, Sparrow, AMRAAM, JDAM, etc). As annoying as it is to send taxpayers’ Euros to the selfish and stingy US, it’s unavoidable, I’m afraid. 😕
Selfish? The US fought many wars in Europe, the ME and Asia. My country is bankrupt thanks to production moving to communist China and massive tax evasion. I’m not defending the bullshit Biden and Trump keep coming up with, but i understand how potential voters feel.
Remember what thexone and only Nato defence case was about, Mike? After 9/11, allied countries stoid behind the US and actively supported the Afghanistan war, even Germany! I would say, that the US profitted from being in that organisation.
As for the US losing jobs to China, which country didn’t? But let’s remember that this was the consequence of Nixon and Reagan ending the cold war embargo of that communist regime. That US workers got hit especially hard is the result of a crazily generous trade agreement. The EU was smarter, didn’t go that far. 🤨
I don’t think that is incompetence.
We don’t know how long it will take for the law to be signed.
It isn’t very unlikely Johnson will never sign it, as it seems he wants to delay it until the next Presidential elections.
Now there is some budget for emergency aid such as Patriot missiles.
There still is some stuff being sent, such as HIMARS missiles.
Also, using this money eases the pressure on Congress.
^bert
Hmm? “Since 24 February 2024, President Joe Biden’s administration has sent weapons worth $20 billion to Ukraine”?
Certainly a typo and should read “2022”. 🤔
Or $20,000.
Too bad Ukraine isn’t an ice cream, parlor. Then mafia land would get hit with everything we have.
That’s certainly the truth, plain vanilla! 😁