With USAID’s Closure, Ukraine Programs ‘Might Not Survive the Year,’ Insiders Say

WASHINGTON DC, July 4 ------ The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has played a critical role in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, providing crucial support across a spectrum of sectors, from direct budget assistance to humanitarian aid, economic development, and essential infrastructure repair.

However, as Kyiv Post reported earlier, USAID will no longer send foreign assistance across the globe, with the State Department taking over any such programs that President Donald Trump’s administration wishes to continue, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday. The top diplomat, in a post on Substack, described the new approach as “prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance.”

Senior State Department officials briefing reporters Tuesday morning claimed that the USAID model was a “failed engagement” that did not reduce the dependency of foreign countries on the US, adding that other nations will need to step up. “We want to see trade deals, compacts, agreements to work together on stuff,” one official said, adding that the administration was looking at new metrics to gauge the success of US assistance work. “We want to see more investment from our partners, co-investment. We want to see trade deals, compacts, agreements, to work together on stuff,” they said.

Kyiv Post spoke with two former senior USAID officials who were directly involved in the agency’s Ukraine operations. Both of them were granted anonymity to speak freely. “Everyone at USAID was ready to work with the administration to figure out what an ‘America first’ policy and program implementation could look like in Ukraine,” one former official highlighted.

The officials said that USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives had gotten together with the agency’s Ukrainian team of 120 and discussed some of the ideas the administration had been putting forward such as, “What support for the mineral deal could look like, how we help set conditions for Trump’s peace, and how to best leverage our relationships in the most populated frontline communities to demonstrate quick wins for the new administration.”

However, “when push comes to shove,” as former officials put it – when it comes to, for example, continuing support to emergency services following Russian attacks against civilian infrastructure – without USAID programs, the US Embassy in Kyiv “doesn’t really have these relationships to even get a sense of the mood outside of the capital.” “We were always looking to provide the most up-to-date information on changes in context, and the only mechanism that could actually respond to events like the Kakhovka Dam Explosion and liberation of Kherson and Kharkiv,” another former USAID employee added. “By doing things on the ground, with the USAID brand, Ukrainians and Ukrainian government officials knew they had a reliable partner and that helped the US government on the policy front,” they emphasized.

Since the Russian invasion in 2022, the US government has provided more than $30 billion in direct budget support to Ukraine through USAID and related mechanisms to help sustain government operations and public services, according to an analysis by the Assessment Capacities Project.

Humanitarian assistance from USAID to Ukraine has exceeded $3 billion between 2022 and the end of 2024, covering approximately 30% of Ukraine’s humanitarian response costs. As of late 2024, USAID was managing 39 active programs in Ukraine with a total budget of $4.28 billion. While it was not entirely clear how many of those programs will be able continue in Ukraine, a senior State Department official on Tuesday was largely dismissive of criticism of the Trump administration’s moves to potentially cutting them, claiming that “a lot of the life-saving work that we do will continue and will be made more efficient.” They also said that they did not anticipate an “operational gap” with USAID’s closure, noting “some number of personnel over from USAID and other places” had been hired at the State Department.

Sources who spoke to Kyiv Post disagreed. According to former officials, in Ukraine there are a few existing contracts that have been “moved to the State Department” but with no legal mechanisms to actually run them. “I believe, around six to seven people from USAID/Ukraine moved over to the State Department, hired through an express and internal to US government-only solicitation. The solicitation opened on a Friday evening and applications were due by noon Monday,” one former official told Kyiv Post, adding “those who applied are people committed to trying to hang on to what is left of foreign assistance in Ukraine.” “It’s a handful of health programs, energy, and cybersecurity,” another former official said when asked about the remaining US assistance programs in Ukraine.

Source: kyivpost.com