As the world waits for Trump, time runs out for Biden to help Ukraine

The Biden administration is planning to rush the last of over $6 billion remaining in Ukraine security assistance out the door by Inauguration Day, as the outgoing team prepares for the weapons flow to end once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The plan, described by two administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, is the only option the White House has to keep sending equipment to Ukraine to fight off continued Russian offensives. But the problems are immense. It normally takes months for munitions and equipment to get to Ukraine after an aid package is announced, so anything rolled out in the coming weeks would likely not fully arrive until well into the Trump administration, and the next commander in chief could halt the shipments before they’re on the ground.

One big holdup to pushing that aid out the door quickly is that the U.S. can only send equipment already on its shelves. While the money allocated reimburses the Pentagon for that equipment, it is dependent on how fast new artillery shells and weapons can be produced or contracted to replace them.

“We have been sending whatever industry can produce each month, but the problem is you can only send these things as they are produced,” said Mark Cancian, a former DOD budget official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The administration could dip into the stockpiles and send equipment more quickly, but it’s unclear the Pentagon would want to do that since it would affect its own readiness.”

The Pentagon will remain “on track to continue to provide the authorized assistance to support Ukraine,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz said. “We expect to have further assistance in the coming weeks.”

The money remaining from April’s $61 billion Ukraine aid package is tied up in two buckets. There is $4.3 billion to pull existing stocks and $2.1 billion in funding to put weapons on contract with U.S. defense companies.

During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington in September, Biden directed the Pentagon to allocate the remainder of the military aid that had been appropriated for Ukraine by Congress before the end of his term. That included plans to parcel out the remaining Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds, money that the government can use to put weapons in production for Ukraine instead of buying them off the shelf, by the end of 2024.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have criticized the Biden administration for spending billions on military aid for Ukraine, with all of Europe collectively only managing to equal the amount Washington has made available. European leaders have said they need to do more for the country and will likely see Trump’s election as a forcing function to invest more heavily in their own defense and offer more support for Ukraine, if their own internal politics allows.

“The first thing he would do is to roll back assistance to Ukraine,” said Jim Townsend, a former top Pentagon official for NATO and Europe during the Obama administration. “I would expect him to make a big show of that. He’d say ‘promise kept,’ but he’s going to halt it early, I’m certain of it.”

One big issue is Biden’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-donated weapons to strike deep inside Russia. The issue has been highly contentious for months as Kyiv has begged for the green light, to no avail. White House and Pentagon officials have said using long-range missiles inside Russia wouldn’t lead to any decisive advantage on the battlefield and expend weapons the Ukrainians should use against advancing Russian forces inside Ukraine.

There is still significant Republican support in the Senate for continuing aid to Ukraine, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the likely next chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Biden last month urging him to speed up shipments of equipment for Ukraine and accelerate American manufacturing before the end of his term in order to quickly bolster Ukraine for the fight ahead.

Trump’s criticism of support for the Ukrainian war effort also led allies to finally seize about $48 billion in interest from frozen Russian assets to give to Ukraine as loans for reconstruction and buying weapons. The Biden administration has pledged about $20 billion in loans for Kyiv out of that fund, but the fate of that pledge, like so much else, is now up in the air.

Trump surrogates have crisscrossed Europe and embassies in Washington for months to talk about plans presented to the candidate to either flood Ukraine with weapons or cut off all support if no peace deal is reached.

The allies, like the Ukrainians, know that no plan is final until Trump makes the call, however, and predictions over his preferred policy are no better than guesses.

Trump has said for months that he would negotiate an end to the war before he reenters the Oval Office, and the outstanding billions in military aid will likely be used as leverage over both Kyiv and Moscow that can be dispensed or turned off as he sees fit.