US suggests that unspent Ukraine aid funds left over after Biden will fall to Trump's authority – media

The Pentagon has suggested that the current administration of US President Joe Biden will not have time to spend all the remaining funds under the PDA programme (about US$5.6 billion) that Congress has allocated to send weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine.

Source: European Pravda with reference to The New York Times

Details: According to a senior US Defense Department official, the Biden administration plans to announce additional assistance to Ukraine by the end of the year. At the same time, she added that it would be difficult to speed up the deployment of the remaining equipment to the battlefield before the Trump administration takes office in January 2025.

The official stressed that the Biden administration will use part of the US$5.6 billion remaining in the presidential budget to transfer from the Pentagon's stockpile to Ukraine instead of waiting months or years for defence contractors to produce weapons under new contracts.

"We will continue to do drawdown packages for the remainder of this administration. But US$5.6 billion is a substantial amount of authority, so I would certainly anticipate that there could be remaining authority that would transition and be available for the next administration to use," she said.

She also added that the Biden administration would likely use the full US$1.2 billion remaining under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which allows Kyiv to purchase goods directly from the defence industry.

The publication emphasises that the big question now is whether "the Trump administration uses that money to help Ukraine".

Background:

• The WSJ wrote that the Biden administration will not have time to send military aid to Ukraine for all the funds approved by Congress before the end of its term in January 2025, and part of the relevant authority will be transferred to Donald Trump's team.
• The Pentagon says it has reached the limit of weapons it can send to Ukraine on a monthly basis without compromising its own combat capability and is also facing logistical problems in delivery.
• Earlier it was reported that Biden had asked Congress to allocate another US$24 billion for military aid to Ukraine and to replenish the stockpile of US weapons that had been transferred to Kyiv. However, the reaction of the future Republican-dominated Congress to this request is cool.
• Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has said that the current US government believes that the military assistance that the US has already provided or plans to provide until the end of Joe Biden's term is enough for Ukraine to fight until the end of 2025.

Support UP or become our patron!