On Thursday, the Pentagon revealed that Washington will need to begin to reduce the size of its military aid packages to Kiev, now that it has begun to run out of aid allocated to Ukraine.
In the statement, the Department of Defense called on Congress to break through an impasse and approve a request from the White House for a $106-billion aid package which would fund aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh noted that Washington has gone through roughly 95% of the previously allocated funding provided for Ukraine, which amounted to over $60 billion. There is only about $1 billion of that funding which remains available to be spent, with that money allocated to sending military equipment from existing stocks to Kiev, which will be replaced in inventories with newly ordered equipment.
Singh said to reporters, “We have had to meter out our support for Ukraine,” adding that the Pentagon will continue now to provide aid, however the packages of aid will gradually diminish.
Of the $106-billion the White House has requested of Congress, $61.4 billion was being allocated for the war in Ukraine.
Presently the funding is caught at an impasse, with the House of Representatives having broken up the funding request, and passing a more popular $14 billion stand-alone package for Israel on to the Senate. That package has been rejected by the Senate, which is demanding the House pass the entire package which was proposed by the White House, with the hopes the popularity of other measures will force the funding of Ukraine.
Since the outbreak of military action in Ukraine in February of 2022, the US has spent roughly $44.2 billion in aid to Kiev, according to State Department data released last week. The State Department added that between 2014 and 2022, the US government had spent an additional $3 billion funding Ukraine.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) testified to the Senate on Wednesday that funding for economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine has also been exhausted. The last allocation was expended at the end of the fiscal year, prior to September 30th, according to Erin McKee, the agency’s assistant administrator at that time. She added that the economic stability of Ukraine would be at risk if there were not more funding provided.
