Pentagon Sees Months Left in Supply of Weapons for Ukraine
Defense officials expect coffers to dry out after spending bill omits more funding for war effort
Updated Oct. 2, 2023 The Wall Street Journal
The Pentagon has more than $5 billion remaining in its coffers to provide weaponry and other security assistance to Ukraine even after Congress declined to include more funding for the war in a weekend bill to keep the government open, Pentagon officials said.
The $5.2 billion is roughly equivalent to the value of the weaponry the Biden administration has sent to Ukraine over the last six months for its fight against Russia, but administration officials said it is unclear how long that money could last. A number of factors contribute to the rate at which security aid flows to Kyiv, and officials believe the $5.2 billion could last only for another few months.
The sum is roughly 12% of the total $43.9 billion in security assistance that the U.S. has sent since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, leaving a sizable amount of security assistance still available.
But another pot of money the U.S. had been using for a longer-term program to refurbish Ukraine’s military and make it more compatible with North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, is empty, administration officials said.
What’s more, an account used to replenish the Defense Department’s own arsenal after the provision of U.S. arms to Ukraine is now down to about $1.6 billion—insufficient to keep the Pentagon whole, officials said.
Aid packages have typically come every two weeks, and the next could come by the end of this week, officials said. But without knowing when Congress will approve more funds, the Pentagon may be reluctant to continue providing regular tranches of new equipment in order to save money to replenish the U.S. military’s own stocks, or in case of a national security emergency, at least until Nov. 17, when the current funding bill runs out, a Senate aide said.
The short-term spending bill signed by Biden on Saturday averted a partial government shutdown but omitted aid for Ukraine, raising questions about the future of U.S. support. The Biden administration had sought another $24 billion in Ukraine funding.
Despite dire warnings from the Biden administration about the impact on Kyiv’s war effort, the threat to security assistance for Ukraine is more likely to emerge in the long term, and U.S. officials say the political uncertainty in Washington sends a terrible signal to the international community that President Biden has rallied in support of Kyiv’s fight against Russia. In addition, Ukraine’s supporters fear Russian President Vladimir Putin will come to believe he can wait out the U.S. The Kremlin is girding for a longer war, making big increases to military spending.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke Sunday with his counterpart in Ukraine, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, to “reiterate” American support for Ukraine, the Pentagon said.
One of the highest-profile elements of U.S. security aid to Ukraine, the training of Ukrainian pilots to fly U.S. F-16 jet fighters, began last week in Texas and is expected to continue. Aid packages typically come every two weeks, and the next could come by the end of this week, officials said.
The U.S. has given Ukraine a vast range of war materiel, including tanks, helicopters, advanced guided missile launchers, and millions of rounds of ammunition. The assistance enabled Kyiv to stave off and beat back a Russian invasion that many initially thought would quickly succeed in toppling the Kyiv government, and even regain some ground Russia took in its initial push. Western assistance has helped significantly degrade Russia’s military, the world’s second-largest, which boasted a formidable reputation before the war.
So far, the weekend snag in funding for Ukraine hasn’t forced the administration to begin rethinking the future of U.S. support for the war in Ukraine, officials said, even as a group of hard-right Republican lawmakers has begun to undermine the otherwise bipartisan, bicameral support for Kyiv.
“Nobody is hitting the panic button over here,” said one U.S. official.
On Monday, Biden said he expected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Republican House majority to pass more Ukraine aid.
“We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” Biden said. “Too many lives are at stake, too many children and too many people.”
McCarthy on Monday signaled he would link future Ukraine aid to strict Republican border security proposals.
“I have been very clear from the very beginning, I have voted to arm Ukraine,” he said. “America takes first priority here. And our border has got to be secure.”
The $5.2 billion the Pentagon has remaining comes after it discovered an accounting error in May, essentially giving it more money for Ukraine than it thought it had. The error stemmed from a discrepancy in the way the Pentagon was valuing the weaponry it had been providing. In addition, the Pentagon has about $1.6 billion in money it uses to draw from to replenish its own stocks of weaponry it has provided to Ukraine.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian officials sought to temper doubts about U.S. support for its war effort against Russia.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday that discussions with Republicans and Democrats were continuing and that the omission was an isolated event.
“We are now working with both sides of Congress so that it does not happen again under any circumstances,” he said. “Therefore, we do not believe that U.S. support has faltered.”
Ukraine has reached a critical moment in the war as its army chips away at entrenched Russian positions in the south of the country as part of a counteroffensive.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the U.S. just over a week ago, requesting more ammunition and offensive systems to sustain the counteroffensive, as well as air-defense systems to contend with Russian missile attacks on critical infrastructure.
Zelensky sought to assure U.S. lawmakers that Ukrainian forces were winning the war, but stressed that additional assistance would be crucial.
Ukrainian officials worry that cracks in support could expand ahead of the presidential election next year, in which the front-runner for the Republican nomination, former President Donald Trump, has criticized the U.S. for backing Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs to grow up and understand that at one point or another we may find ourselves alone, because one or another partner may break away due to domestic processes, either due to domestic politics or due to elections,” Zelensky said over the summer. “Anything can happen.”
While Europe has shouldered a growing portion of the Western assistance to Ukraine and remains firmly behind Kyiv, the continent’s ability to scale up military and economic support to make up for a reduction in U.S. assistance is severely limited.
Recent House funding votes show broad bipartisan support for Ukraine aid—311 lawmakers in the 433-member House voted this week to pass a measure appropriating $300 million in security assistance for the country—but the number of Republicans opposed is growing and now makes up more than half the GOP conference. Criticism of U.S. backing for Ukraine has come mainly from Republicans led by Trump.
“What we’re seeing is a very vocal minority of House members create barriers to continued assistance in the very near term,” said Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.).
Some of Ukraine’s supporters in Congress from both parties are pushing for the administration to make a fresh request for a full year of support, calculating that it will be easier to ask for a single, larger pot of money than to keep asking members of Congress to take tough votes as election season heats up. A full year of budget authority would also give Ukraine a better ability to plan the fight, senators said.
“Having to remove the proverbial Band-Aid multiple times is unhelpful,” Young said.
Sabrina Siddiqui and Laurence Norman contributed to this article.
Write to Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com and Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com