Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, flanked by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown, announced a new $6 billion aid package for Ukraine after meeting with defense officials from dozens of countries committed to helping them fend off Russian aggression.
Austin’s announcement came only days after President Joe Biden signed his national security supplemental funding request into law that allocated roughly $60 billion for the Department of Defense to use to help Ukraine. Shortly after Biden signed the legislation into law, the department announced a $1 billion military aid package.
The aid package Austin announced “will allow us to procure new capabilities for Ukraine from the U.S. industry,” the secretary said. “This is the largest security assistance package that we’ve committed to date. It will include critical interceptors for Ukraine’s Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems, more counterdrone systems and support equipment, significant amounts of artillery ammunition and air-to-ground munitions, and maintenance and sustainment support.”
The capabilities this $6 billion package will ultimately include are additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems, additional munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, equipment that integrates Western air defense launchers, radars, and missiles with Ukrainian air defense systems, and many other much-needed weapons.
This package is being funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative using funding appropriated by the national security supplemental. This means the Pentagon will use the money to pay defense contractors to manufacture the assets that will then be provided to Ukraine. The $1 billion aid package announced on Wednesday was funded through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which means the department provides Ukraine weapons from its inventory and agrees to contracts with defense companies for new replacements.
“The key part here is to make sure Ukraine can defend itself,” Brown said when asked whether Ukraine can win the war. “And as the secretary highlighted, and I have talked about here recently, is that unchecked aggression leads to more aggression. So this is why it is so important for us to put Ukraine in a place to defend itself and that we don’t have this broaden to a much wider conflict.”
Austin added, “Ukraine can be successful if it has the right amount of security assistance.”
Austin and Brown met with defense leaders from roughly 50 countries virtually on Friday morning for their monthly Ukraine Contact Group meeting, where the officials discuss Ukraine’s most pressing battlefield needs. Friday’s conversation, which included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, came on the two-year anniversary of their first meeting.
The Pentagon had been unable to provide aid to Ukraine since late 2023 due to a small group of House Republicans who were holding up legislation to allocate funding for the department. Ukrainian forces felt the effects of the lapse in U.S. military assistance on the front lines.
Ukrainian troops were forced to ration ammunition and ultimately withdrew from the city of Avdiivka in February due to Congress’s holdup of Biden’s supplemental request.
There is an unknown about whether the influx of U.S. aid will be enough to help them gain back the losses incurred over the last several months. Austin was cautious to note that no specific weapon they could provide would act as a “silver bullet” for Ukraine.
The Ukraine supplemental passed the House of Representatives with a 311-112 vote last weekend, which allowed for it to clear the Senate and head to the president’s desk after months of delay.
“There is no person in the United States House of Representatives that can tell you what objective we are meeting by injecting this money into Ukraine,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted against the aid package, told the Washington Examiner. “There is nobody that can tell you if we just bought Ukraine victory in six months or six years. We have no analysis from the Pentagon about what this money will do.”
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Comparatively, the chairman of the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), told the Washington Examiner, “Ukraine can absolutely win this war.”
“The U.S. and our allies must put Ukraine in as strong of a position as possible to either precipitate a Russian battlefield collapse or negotiate its terms of victory against Russia from a position of strength,” McCaul added. “Make no mistake — Putin’s entire theory of victory is that he can outlast Western support for Ukraine. The recent passage of our national security package will put Ukraine in a better position on the battlefield against Russian forces and further show Putin that he cannot outlast us.”