US expected to announce nearly $6B in Ukraine aid ahead of deadline

The Biden administration is expected to soon announce billions of dollars for Ukraine before a deadline to release the funding at the end of the month, according to multiple reports.

The approximately $5.8 billion in presidential drawdown authority (PDA), a method for the U.S. to quickly send weapons to Ukraine, would be announced as a series of large military aid packages that would then be delivered over the course of several months.

The plan is a workaround after Congress didn’t include an extension for the funds in its stopgap measure to keep the government open past Sept. 30, which would have allowed the administration to spread out the drawdowns, as it has with past Ukraine aid.

Asked Wednesday about the administration’s intentions for the remaining dollars, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said she had no announcements but said the U.S. is “committed to making sure Ukraine gets the resources Congress approved by the end of the president's term, . . . and we are working with the interagency to do just that." 

Assistance to Ukraine is often released in batches of hundreds of millions of dollars, with the equipment then shipped within days or weeks, a method to avoid emptying Pentagon stocks and account for the time to backfill. 

In obligating the nearly $6 billion to Ukraine before it expires in less than a week, the U.S. would ensure that it can spend the money, and eventually deliver specific weapons from dwindling U.S. stockpiles.

But that method of allocation was Plan B after the House left out language in its continuing resolution bill to extend the PDA into the next fiscal year so that it would not expire.

House Republicans, who are divided over funding for Ukraine, reportedly pressed congressional leaders to leave the language out of the legislation, which the chamber passed Wednesday. 

A congressional aide told The Hill last week that there may be some legal challenges to allocating the $5.8 billion at once. 

Lawyers for the administration were concerned that there may not be an authority to permit transfers of munitions that are not currently in stock, or considered in surplus, they said. 

And not everyone is pleased with the administration’s plan, including Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who bashed Biden for waiting too long to use the money to arm Ukrainians.  

“It is unfortunately typical of this administration to wait until the last possible moment to announce full use of the PDA,” Wicker said in a statement Wednesday. “Brave Ukrainians are fighting and dying defending their country so that Americans and Europeans won’t have to. President Biden needs to expedite the actual transfer immediately. They need weapons, not words.”

Asked about Wicker’s statement, Singh said the aid did not get allocated sooner because Congress failed to pass Biden’s requested Ukraine security supplemental bill until just six months ago. The supplemental included dollars to backfill U.S. stocks.

“When you're not able to backfill and refill our own stocks, we're not able to send out PDAs,” Singh explained. “During that time we still had some existing authority, but we weren't able to send equipment, capability, systems out to Ukraine because we didn't have it in our stocks.” 

She added that the lag also affected packages down the road. 

“Just to push back on that criticism, I would say that when you don't have what you need on your shelves, it makes it hard to hand out that equipment in the timetable that Congress gave us when it was authorized.”