Kyiv’s Fears Come True: US Defense Slashes Military Aid in Proposed Budget

June 13 ------ While he admitted that Russia was the aggressor in the war, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, as far as his department is concerned, military aid to Ukraine will be reduced in the 2026 budget.

When pressed on Capitol Hill about whether the Defense Department intends to increase or decrease spending for Ukraine vis-à-vis previous administrations in its proposed budget to Congress, the Pentagon chief said, “It is a reduction in this budget.” Leaders in Kyiv have publicly worried that his would be the case.

Oleksandr Merezhko, head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee told Newsweek magazine that “such a reduction will lead to more casualties on the Ukrainian side, including casualties among civilians.” “Anyone in the US who is acting in support of the reduction of the military aid to Ukraine becomes morally responsible for the increased casualties among civilians.”

Precise details of the department’s proposed 2026 budget to Congress were not made public. For the first time in the history of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the US Secretary of Defense declined to attend, when Hegseth took a pass on the June 4 meeting in Ramstein, Germany.

In March, the US administration ordered a pause to aid shipments to Ukraine. In an interview with Fox News two weeks later, President Donald Trump noted, “The money,” the president said, “what bothered me — I hated to see the way it was, you know, excuse me, pissed away.”

The statement was rather misleading in that military aid for Ukraine does not arrive in the form of money, but rather weapons for US stockpiles that are later replenished by congressionally approved funds to US arms manufacturers. Eliminating aid for Ukraine will only embolden Putin, said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of parliament for the Odesa region. “It’s completely opposite to President Trump’s intention to end the war,” he told Newsweek.

Describing his position in the Capitol Hill hearings, Hegseth said, “The alternative of endless war that is largely funded by the United States and fought by Ukrainians, for which the Russians have unlimited resources to continue to pour in, does not make sense strategically for the United States.” Ranking member of the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Chris Coons (D-DE) was one of several lawmakers on the panel to caution Hegseth against abandoning aid to Ukraine. “It seems to me concerning that the 2026 request eliminates aid to Ukraine entirely,” he said. “We cannot abandon Ukraine. That would put us significantly at a strategic disadvantage.”

Source: kyivpost.com