
DNIPROPETROVSK OBLAST, Ukraine, February 4 ------ It’s been months since the Ukrainian battalion stationed on the frosty, rutted frontline has received a new armored personnel carrier to take men forward, supply munitions and evacuate the wounded. The battalion and others like it are the endpoint in a complex chain moving American military equipment to the front in eastern Ukraine.
For a unit commander, who goes by the callsign Tyson, any delay in that chain is a matter of life or death. The armored vehicles, supplied by the U.S. and its allies, are prized because even old ones are safer than the Soviet-era equipment usually available to Ukrainian forces. “When we don’t have enough cars, we’re not able to get the injured,” Tyson said, shifting his feet in the sticky January mud of a training field where he waited for vehicle repairs. Icy winds fluttered the camouflage netting concealing the vehicle. “When we didn't make it in time, they died,” he said.
In the final year of President Joe Biden’s term, decisions on key shipments and weapons in Ukraine were stalled not just by months of congressional delays, but also by internal debates over escalation risks with Russia, as well as concerns over whether the U.S. stockpile was sufficient, a Reuters investigation found. Adding to the confusion was a chaotic weapons-tracking system in which even the definition of “delivered” differed among U.S. military branches.
Delays were worst during the months it took Congress to pass $60 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine, held up by opposition from Donald Trump and congressional Republicans amid Trump’s successful run for president. But the jam continued well after the money was approved, according to a Reuters analysis of official announcements, U.S. spending data and interviews with more than 40 Ukrainian and American officials, congressional aides and lawmakers. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security deliberations.
Including the splashy April 2024 aid package, the Biden administration authorized a monthly average of about $558 million through September. The average value of shipments accelerated sharply after Trump won the presidential race, to levels not seen since mid-2023, the Reuters analysis found. But despite the Biden team’s billing of the later announcements as a surge in aid from October through Inauguration Day, monthly aid from the U.S only reached the $1.1 billion monthly average established during the first two years of the war, the analysis found.
By November, just about half of the total dollar amount the U.S. had promised in 2024 from American stockpiles had been delivered, and only about 30% of promised armored vehicles had arrived by early December, according to two congressional aides, a U.S. official, and a lawmaker briefed on the data. In the final 12 months of Biden’s term, Ukraine lost nearly all the land it regained in its largely inconclusive 2023 counteroffensive. As 2024 drew to a close, Russian forces were capturing a daily average of around 20 square kilometers, claiming nearly the equivalent of the area of Manhattan every three days, according to data compiled by the Institute for the Study of War.
Some analysts said there was no clear link between the delays in U.S. aid and Ukraine's territorial losses: Kyiv's inability to fix other challenges issues of manpower, morale and how Ukraine uses the weapons it already has were more to blame. Ukrainian officials had already privately told Americans they did not expect major offensives in 2024, a senior U.S. official said. “Wars are never entirely won or lost by aid packages,” said Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This requires strategy, force design, force employment, leadership, morale of forces and other things, not just incoming aid.”
But in 2024, Jones also saw no clear strategic objective from the U.S. and European allies. “If the objective is to start to beat back Russian forces or to get a stalemate, then what was given to Ukraine was not sufficient.” Uncertainty over Ukraine’s war effort has intensified with Trump’s return to power in Washington. His new administration can halt shipments anytime, even those already committed. In his first week in office, Trump froze foreign aid to Ukraine, among many other countries. He and his congressional backers have made clear they want to cut support for Ukraine, and at a presidential debate he refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win. Among his campaign promises was a boast he could end the war in a day. That hasn’t happened, but many Ukrainians fear he’ll impose terms favorable to Russia.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Gen. Keith Kellogg, would not say directly whether the administration would continue to send weapons to Ukraine. When asked, he told Reuters: “Anything that gives you leverage is critical in negotiations.” Under Biden, the U.S. has pledged more military aid than any other country to Ukraine. The administration ultimately eased restrictions on American-made weapons, allowing Kyiv to strike inside Russia with long-range missiles, and ramped up investment in Ukraine’s drone industry. On several occasions, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan ordered the Pentagon to divert air defense interceptors from other countries to Ukraine, three senior U.S. officials said. “My frustration is that Ukraine could have received more weapons earlier and more advanced capabilities earlier in the war so that the assistance was not metered out,” said one of the three officials. The official said the slow pace of aid in 2024 prevented decisive Ukrainian breakthroughs.
Source: reuters.com
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