Ukraine forced to ‘save and to ration’ ammunition amid US aid impasse
Joel Gehrke
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Ukrainian forces find themselves outgunned by Russia as their commanders face the prospect of a prolonged lapse in U.S. military support, according to Ukrainian officials and Western observers.
“We’re talking about [Ukrainians firing] hundreds of shells per day versus thousands of shells used by Russians per day,” senior Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the foreign affairs committee in Ukraine’s parliament, said. “We have to be economical. We have to save and to ration what we have.”
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The Biden administration unveiled “a new package of weapons and equipment” valued at $200 million on Tuesday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continued a diplomatic tour of Washington, D.C., to make the case for a continuance of the military supplies. The potential end of that assistance has come into view in recent months, as President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans so far have not completed a political transaction in which conservative border security policies would be paired with any new funding to support Ukraine.
“We’re in negotiations to get funding we need,” Biden said Tuesday during a press conference alongside Zelensky. “Not making promises, but hopefully we can get there. I think we can.”
That impasse has not prevented Biden’s team from insisting that the United States remain committed to backing Zelensky’s bid to liberate all of the territory occupied by Russia.
“Our role at the moment is to give him what he needs … so that his government can function and ensure that it is able to drive Russia out of its territory,” U.S. Ambassador Julianne Smith, the top American envoy to NATO, said in an interview with Lithuanian media published Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for his part, has already begun to taper the flow of aid to Ukraine as the funding authorized under previous laws runs low, according to a senior congressional aide.
“The Pentagon’s point is ‘We are now out of actual money. That’s the money that we’re using to buy newer, more modern, better weapons to put into our stocks to replace the weapons we’re pulling to give to Ukraine,’” a congressional aide with the House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans told the Washington Examiner. “So Austin’s point is ‘I’m not going to keep [drawing down] our stocks if I’m not given the backfill [funding] to refill our stocks.’”
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have tried to create a sense of urgency over the last two months — a top Zelensky adviser warned a Washington, D.C., audience last week that Ukraine could “lose this war” if American support runs dry — but this deadlock doesn’t feature the kind of hard deadline that has organized analogous disputes over government funding legislation.
“I don’t think the situation is currently perilous,” the Atlantic Council’s John Herbst, a retired ambassador who led the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, told the Washington Examiner. “I’m not sure it would be perilous a month from now. Certainly, six months from now, it’s [more] dangerous.”
Yet the slow pace of talks on Capitol Hill has skepticism that any deal will struck this year.
“It is practically impossible even if we reach an agreement to craft it and get it through the Senate and get it through the House before Christmas,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters earlier Tuesday.
The ambiguous deadline has created space for political incentives to trump policy priorities, some observers believe, in a way that has extended the delay.
“There ought to be a compromise here because it is reasonable to want to control the border; it is reasonable and in our interest to help Ukraine,” a former senior U.S. official familiar with Ukraine policy told the Washington Examiner. “And I think that is what will happen. But you know, Washington, they always escalate first and then go to a last-minute compromise.”
Viewed from Kyiv, that process makes for a maddening spectacle. “We don’t have enough ammunition,” a Ukrainian security official told the Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity. “So we actually — we have probably 20-30 times more targets, really important and valuable targets, each day, and we just don’t have [enough] ammo to destroy them.”
Still, Zelensky reiterated his commitment to a total liberation of Ukraine during his appearance alongside Biden, emphasizing it’s “insane” to cede any territory to Russia.
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“We have our people there,” he said at the White House. “That’s part of Ukrainian society. And we are talking about human beings. They are being [subjected to] torture, they are being raped, and they are being killed. … That’s not a matter of territory; that’s a matter of lives of families, of children, of their histories.”
Merezhko expressed a similar resolve. “We have no choice,” he said. “We have to fight tooth and nail, even without weaponry.”