The US president-elect has previously warned that Kiev may see less money once he takes office
US President Joe Biden will not get to spend all of his allocated military aid money for Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, leaving the incoming administration with “a few billion dollars” to decide whether to give to Kiev, the Pentagon has announced.
Ukraine has received a total of $122 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid from the US since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, according to the latest figures provided by the Pentagon. The military component of this sum has come from two main sources: a series of spending bills passed by Congress, and the use of Presidential Drawdown Authority – a fund capped by Congress that Biden can use to send weapons and ammunition from US stocks direct to Kiev.
The Biden administration has used this authority 72 times to transfer arms to Ukraine, most recently on Thursday when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a $500 million weapons package, comprising anti-air missiles, artillery shells and air-to-ground missiles.
While the package will be the final tranche of military aid sent to Kiev under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, the fund itself is not completely spent, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Wednesday.
“There will be a few billion dollars in authority left for the incoming administration to decide what they decide to do with that remaining authority,” Singh said.
Singh did not say exactly how much money would be handed over to Trump’s administration, but a reporter present at the briefing put the figure at $4.8 billion, and Singh did not push back against this claim.
The spokeswoman added that the Pentagon was not able to spend the full amount available under the Presidential Drawdown Authority as “we were not able to resupply our own stocks” fast enough to replace weapons sent to Kiev.
Trump has promised to bring the Ukraine conflict to a swift end once he takes office. While he has provided few details as to how he will achieve this, he has said that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and force the pair to negotiate.
Some media reports have suggested that the president-elect’s team will push for a freeze of the conflict along the current battle lines, although Moscow has repeatedly stated that it seeks to end the conflict once and for all instead of putting it on hold, a pause that Kiev could use to rearm itself for a future war.
Trump is widely expected to use continued US aid as leverage to force Zelensky to the negotiating table. Asked by NBC News last month whether Ukraine should “prepare for less aid from the United States” after his inauguration, Trump replied “Possibly. Yeah, probably, sure.”
