U.S. scrounges $300M in arms for Ukraine
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will rush about $300 million in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10 billion to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced Tuesday.
It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of money to buy replacement weapons, they are $10 billion overdrawn.
The announcement comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions and efforts to get fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition. U.S. officials have insisted for months that the United States wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided the additional replenishment funds, which are part of the stalled supplemental spending bill.
The replenishment funds have allowed the Pentagon to pull existing munitions, air defense systems and other weapons from its reserve inventories under presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, to send to Ukraine and then sign contracts to order replacements, which are needed to maintain U.S. military readiness.
“When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan in announcing the $300 million in additional aid.
The Pentagon also has had a separate Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, which has allowed it to fund longer-term contracts with industry to produce new weapons for Ukraine.
Senior defense officials who briefed reporters said the Pentagon was able to get cost savings in some of those longer-term contracts of roughly $300 million and, given the battlefield situation, decided to use those savings to send more weapons. The officials said the cost savings basically offset the new package and keep the replenishment spending underwater at $10 billion.
One of the officials said the package represented a “one time shot” — unless Congress passes the supplemental spending bill, which includes roughly $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine, or more cost savings are found. It is expected to include anti-aircraft missiles, artillery rounds and armor systems, the official said.
“This is not a sustainable way to support Ukraine,” said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, calling it a “one time good deal” that officials can’t plan on occurring again.
Ukraine’s situation has become more dire, with units on the front line rationing munitions as they face a vastly better supplied Russian force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly implored Congress for help, but House Republican leadership has not been willing to bring Ukraine aid to the floor for a vote, saying any aid must first address border security needs.
Pentagon officials said Monday during budget briefings that they were counting on the supplemental to cover the $10 billion replenishment hole.
“If we don’t get the $10 billion we would have to find other means,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said. “Right now we’re very much focused on the need for that supplemental.”
This is the second time in less than nine months that the Pentagon has “found” money to use for additional weapons shipments to Ukraine. In June, defense officials said they had overestimated the value of the weapons the U.S. had sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years.
At the time, Pentagon officials said a review found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. The discovery resulted in a surplus that the department used for presidential drawdown packages until the end of December.
The United States has committed more than $44.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including more than $44.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
The Pentagon is $10 billion overdrawn in the replenishment account in part as a result of inflationary pressures, and in part because the new systems the Pentagon is seeking to replace the old systems with cost more, such as the upcoming Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, which the Army is buying to replace the long-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS.
The vast majority of those munitions have come from Army stockpiles because of the nature of the conventional land war in Ukraine.
The months without further shipments of U.S. support have hurt operations, and Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiivka last month, where outnumbered defenders had withheld a Russian assault for four months.
CIA Director William Burns told Congress that entire Ukrainian units have told him in recent days of being down to their last few dozen artillery shells and other ammunition. Burns called the retreat from Avdiivka a failure of ammunition resupply, not a failure of Ukrainian will.
PUSH FOR A VOTE
House Democrats and a small group of centrist Republicans on Tuesday launched separate long-shot efforts to force a vote on tens of billions of dollars in wartime aid for Ukraine, intensifying pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson to take up the foreign funding package.
Democrats, as the minority in the House, began gathering signatures to force a floor vote on the Senate’s $95 billion package of aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan through a “discharge petition” — a seldom-successful procedural tool that can circumvent the speaker’s control over which bills come up for a vote. Shortly after, a group of Republicans launched their own signature drive for a proposal that would trim the package to $66 billion, mostly for military aid, and include border security provisions.
The moves underscored the stubborn impasse in Congress over the military aid for Ukraine, with conservatives balking at providing more ammunition and weaponry for Kyiv. Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has resisted taking up the package passed by the Senate last month and insisted that the House work its own will on the matter. He has suggested the House will turn to the package only after government funding is settled — and he still insists the money must be paired with policy changes at the U.S. border with Mexico.
At the same time, Ukrainian soldiers have suffered from shortages of ammunition as U.S. supplies have been shut off in recent months.
“We have made every single opportunity to engage with the speaker on bringing the bill to the floor as a bipartisan piece of legislation,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “Why not just bring it to the floor? You know, it would win overwhelmingly.”
For either petition to trigger action in the House, it must be signed by a majority of lawmakers, or 218 members. With Republicans controlling the House 219-213, at least some Republicans would have to buck their leadership and sign the Democratic-backed petition, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, to reach a majority. Plus, some progressive Democrats are unlikely to sign on because the legislation includes military aid for Israel.
“What Israel is doing — and I think the president is starting to express this is as well — is absolutely unacceptable,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wa., the chair of the House Progressive Caucus. “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu cannot be doing that with United States aid. We are killing people in Gaza right now.”
Meanwhile, Johnson is facing pressure from within his own conference to take up aid for Ukraine, even as a contingent of hard-line conservatives have vocally resisted sending more military aid to Ukraine.
A group of centrist Republicans began gathering signatures for their own discharge petition effort. Their proposal would provide $48 billion for Ukraine, mostly by sending ammunition and weaponry. It would also for one year require that asylum seekers remain in Mexico while their cases are decided. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, led that effort. It gained support from six Republicans and six Democrats on Tuesday.
Fitzpatrick said he was still working to finalize legislative text for the proposal.
“We’re going to expand both from the right and the left,” he said, adding that the discharge petition was the only “bipartisan option in the House.”
A separate group of House Republicans is also trying to draft its own version of a foreign aid package in hopes of breaking the stalemate. Their version also trims back the foreign aid to Ukraine so that it is only for the country’s military, not for the functioning of its government.
Johnson has encouraged Republicans to resist signing on to any discharge petitions and said he would eventually address Ukraine aid, but he has not come out with any clear plan.
Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who signed onto Fitzpatrick’s effort, said that House leadership had not contacted him to dissuade him from signing the petition.
“I want to send a message to the people of Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan that we’re for them,” he said.
A discharge petition was last successfully employed in 2015, when a bipartisan group forced a vote to revive the U.S. Export-Import Bank more than three months after its charter lapsed.
Rep. Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican who was part of the effort, said that it only worked because a group of GOP lawmakers, who held the majority at the time, instigated the discharge petition and were later joined by the minority party.
“It is nigh on impossible for the minority to instigate the discharge petition and make it succeed,” he said.