The Biden administration is preparing to rush over $6 billion in military aid to Ukraine before Inauguration Day, POLITICO reported on Wednesday.
The report said the Biden team expects the incoming administration to end the weapons flow, as President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on ending the proxy war.
The Biden administration has $4.3 billion in military aid that can be pulled from existing US stockpiles, known as the Presidential Drawdown Authority. There is also $2.1 billion available in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides money to put weapons under contract, meaning it takes longer to deliver.
Biden officials are unsure if they’ll be able to rush all the aid to Ukraine before January 20 since any military equipment they send must be replaced, and it’s unclear if production levels are high enough to ship so many weapons in such a short period of time.
“We have been sending whatever industry can produce each month, but the problem is you can only send these things as they are produced,” Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon budget official, told POLITICO. “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.”
Even if the weapons are sent from US military stockpiles, the actual delivery time could still take months, and Biden officials are worried the next administration could cancel them before they arrive in Ukraine.
