The U.S. will send Ukraine the full $6 billion in outstanding military aid before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said at a briefing on Nov. 7.
Previously, Politico reported that U.S. President Joe Biden was rushing to deliver the remaining $6 billion by the end of his term out of fear that a Trump administration might halt weapons shipments to Ukraine.
Ukraine will receive $4 billion under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which pulls weapons from U.S. stocks, and $2 billion from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), Singh told reporters.
For what it’s worth, military aid of this sort doesn’t involve any money leaving the US. This is the government paying companies to send war materials to Ukraine, or sending and writing off our own old military equipment. You can take issue with the money going to the military industrial complex, but it’s not going overseas at the expense of our own citizens.
Also, funding Ukraine’s defense is vastly immensely cheaper than fighting any conflicts of our own, and has similar geopolitical outcomes.
Literally two of the same arguments used to get the US mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, but even if this instance includes no cash payouts, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cost to US taxpayers made in neglect of our own people. Further, hundreds of billions in cash have been spent on the war in Ukraine and our US-sponsored genocide in Palestine.
Forgive me if I’m not willing to digest them this time around. This nonsense and the neglect of our people here are why my eighty-year old parents are driving for DoorDash.
Let’s be perfectly clear though that pulling back on foreign military aid will in no way help the American people under the Trump administration. None of that “saved money” will go anywhere other than being diverted to loyal business owner interests.
Except now you have a hostile nation in Russia being let loose in Eastern Europe.