Lindsay Wise, Ian Lovett, Doug Cameron and Nancy A. Youssef
The Washington stalemate over U.S. policy at the southern border is beginning to reverberate on the Ukraine battlefield, where Kyiv’s troops are running out of ammunition and the Pentagon says it can’t provide more without emptying its own arsenal.
In recent weeks, the Pentagon has run out of money to send more hardware and ammunition, just as Russia intensified its ground assaults and missile and drone attacks on Ukraine. The White House has asked for $45 billion to fund security assistance for Ukraine, but Senate Republicans are demanding border-policy changes in return.
“We’re out of money,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Thursday.
Short of congressional approval of more funding, the White House can either dip into the Pentagon’s arsenal with no guarantee the gear will be replaced, or leave Ukraine to rely on its own growing but still small arms industry and European allies.
Without an influx of weapons and ammunition, Ukraine could soon find itself in a dire situation. Ill-equipped to defend the 600-mile front, Ukrainian generals would have to choose between giving ground or sending outgunned troops into the trenches without artillery cover. In either case, Russia would be well-positioned to take more than the 20% of Ukraine’s territory it already holds. Officials in Kyiv and Washington warn that if Russia succeeds, other authoritarian leaders around the world would be emboldened by what they would perceive as U.S. weakness.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive last summer gained little ground in the country’s southeast at heavy cost. In October, as Ukraine ran low on shells and manpower—and Washington’s attention seemed to shift to the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza—the Russians went back on the attack.
Moscow has mobilized Russia’s economy for war against its much smaller neighbor, and Russia’s superior firepower is already yielding results. Its forces are consolidating control over Marinka in eastern Ukraine, a town of a few thousand inhabitants before the war that has been reduced to rubble by Russian bombardments.
Assault operations paused
The Pentagon’s dwindling funds have led the U.S. to trim the size of packages for Ukraine, and Ukrainian soldiers said they started to notice a shortage of artillery a few months ago.
“We’ve stopped all assault operations in the area,” said the 31-year-old commander of a drone squad working near Robotyne, a village on the southeastern front retaken by Ukrainian forces over the summer. “We’re focused on holding our ground and defending positions.”
Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly demonstrated the need for Ukraine to have a stocked arsenal of air-defense missiles: A barrage of 99 missiles fired Tuesday was the second significant salvo in less than a week, after one of the largest missile attacks of the war the previous Friday.
In all, the U.S. has already provided around $44 billion in military assistance. That volume of arms transfers isn’t worked into the Pentagon’s regular annual budget, so the administration has relied on supplemental budgets passed by Congress, akin to those that funded the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pentagon warehouses have been the biggest source of weapons for Ukraine. In addition, the U.S. has paid military contractors for missiles, shells, specialized vehicles and other systems to send directly to Ukraine. The Pentagon has authority to transfer about $4.2 billion in weapons from the U.S. arsenal to Ukraine, but no money to replenish those stocks. There are no imminent plans to announce additional aid packages, defense officials said.
Ukraine still has some U.S. arms on the way: Defense companies are continuing to sell Kyiv weapons paid for with U.S. tax dollars under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
As of late November, RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, and
Lockheed Martin had secured the largest portion of the $27 billion spent by the Pentagon on new contracts to arm Ukraine and refill the U.S. armory. RTX said it still expects another $4 billion in Ukraine-driven contracts over the next two years on top of the $3 billion already secured.‘We’ll do the right thing’
The supplemental request under debate on Capitol Hill totals $110.5 billion to fund security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Most of the roughly $45 billion earmarked for Ukraine would run through 2025; it includes $12 billion for direct sales of weapons, $18 billion to refill Pentagon and allied stockpiles and around $4 billion to boost domestic production.
Although a bipartisan group of negotiators in the Senate missed an initial end-of-year goal to reach an agreement on border-policy changes to unlock more Ukraine aid, the lawmakers met remotely over the Christmas recess and resumed meeting in person in the Capitol last week. The group has reached agreement on some issues but continues to haggle over several key provisions, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Even if senators can pass a border deal, it’s uncertain if or when the House might take it up.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La) will be constrained by a narrow two-vote GOP majority. Johnson, who visited the border last week, has said that any deal on Ukraine aid was contingent on changes in U.S. immigration policy largely outlined in a border-security bill passed last spring by the Republican-controlled House. The bill would continue building former President Donald Trump’s border wall, reinstate a policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico and make it nearly impossible to claim asylum at the southern border.
The lead Republican negotiator in the Senate, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, has warned that the House border bill can’t pass his Democratic-led chamber.
On the front in Ukraine, with shells running low, artillery gunners can’t fire on small groups of enemy soldiers, enabling Russian troops to approach Ukrainian lines and threaten entrenched infantry. The Ukrainians are adapting by using explosive drones in place of artillery to strike Russian vehicles and infantry. The drones are cheaper than shells and more accurate, but less powerful and more labor intensive.
“They have 140 million people. We have 40 million. They have stores of Soviet weapons—even if they’re not great, they still fire,” said Serhiy Knish, a 55-year-old veteran who left the military in November. “Aid from the West is why we can still stand as a country.”
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