"US leadership in the coalition of over 50 countries providing military assistance to Ukraine is crucial to countering terror and aggression not only in Ukraine but throughout the world," he added.
Yegor Cherniyev, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, said the package “is designed only to hold us back for a short time, but it is unable to change the situation on the battlefield in our favor or even give us effective resistance.” And it is unclear whether Ukraine will receive more aid from its largest donor.
Ukrainian officials warn that without new funding, some salaries and social benefits could suffer starting in January. Washington’s financial aid alone makes up about a third of Ukraine’s budget. The money cannot be used to directly pay soldiers’ salaries, but with so much money already going to the military, Western aid is critical to keeping civilian businesses running.
Adding to the uncertainty over U.S. aid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is blocking a proposed $50 billion new aid plan from the European Union.
In addition to the budget constraints, Zelensky said last week that Ukraine’s military leadership had presented a plan to mobilize up to 500,000 additional troops to fight Russia — which Zelensky estimated would cost the country about $13 billion. “I would like to know where the money will come from,” Zelensky said during a press conference in Kyiv.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told Forbes on Wednesday that Ukraine has “exhausted its domestic potential to finance military needs.”.
"We do not rule out that we will have to look for additional internal sources of financing," Marchenko added.
As Ukraine waits for Congress to pass additional aid, this latest package will be welcome news for soldiers on the front lines, who have complained that their already scarce ammunition supplies have dwindled in recent months. Some are firing five times less artillery. After the Ukrainian counteroffensive stalled with the onset of winter, Russia seized the initiative on the battlefield, claiming some successes near Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.
In recent weeks, White House officials have suggested that the arms package, known as a “retrieval” from the Pentagon’s stockpile, was the last thing they could do with the money they had, trying to use what they described as a dire funding situation to push Congress to approve Biden’s request for an additional $60 billion related to the war in Ukraine. The United States has allocated $44 billion in security assistance since Putin’s invasion in February 2022.
“This small aid package is evidence for us that there are problems with U.S. support for Ukraine,” Cherniyev said. “We still believe that these problems are temporary and will be resolved very soon. … Next year, the Russians are quite likely counting on the fact that U.S. support for Ukraine will decrease and they will be able to achieve their goal.”.
With future funding uncertain, Ukrainian officials have focused more on domestic arms production. Zelensky has promised that Ukraine will produce 1 million drones next year, and Kyiv has begun producing artillery ammunition, albeit in small quantities. Cherniyev warned that continued U.S. support “is the only factor that determines how long the war will last and how it will end.”.
Despite the relatively smaller size of the latest package, Kyiv-based political expert Mykola Davidyuk said, “I think this is good news.”.
"The fact that our partners do not leave us to our fate, even when bureaucratic moments do not allow them to transfer the amount of money that they want and that we would like, they still do not abandon us and support us in any case," he said.
