{"id":399281,"date":"2025-09-05T06:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T06:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399281\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T06:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T06:33:14","slug":"how-much-aid-is-the-u-s-still-giving-ukraine-under-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399281\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Aid Is the U.S. Still Giving Ukraine Under Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a cabinet meeting last week, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated a key milestone: The United States, according to him, was no longer<\/a> funding Ukraine in its defense against Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re no longer involved with funding Ukraine, but we are involved with trying to stop the war and the killing in Ukraine. So we\u2019re selling missiles and military equipment, millions and millions and ultimately billions of dollars to the NATO people,\u201d Trump said<\/a>. \u201cSo, they\u2019re funding the entire war. We\u2019re not funding anything. I think it\u2019s an important point to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a cabinet meeting last week, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated a key milestone: The United States, according to him, was no longer<\/a> funding Ukraine in its defense against Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re no longer involved with funding Ukraine, but we are involved with trying to stop the war and the killing in Ukraine. So we\u2019re selling missiles and military equipment, millions and millions and ultimately billions of dollars to the NATO people,\u201d Trump said<\/a>. \u201cSo, they\u2019re funding the entire war. We\u2019re not funding anything. I think it\u2019s an important point to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s not entirely wrong\u2014but he\u2019s not exactly right, either, according to government reports and think tank analysts. On the military side, the United States is still set to spend billions of dollars on weapons for Ukraine, while on the civilian side, aid continues to flow, albeit with significant reductions.<\/p>\n

The bulk of U.S. aid to Kyiv has come through five mammoth congressional appropriations bills totaling $175 billion in support, of which $128 billion goes to programs that directly support Ukraine\u2019s military and civil society, according<\/a> to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The rest goes to secondary goals related to Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine, such as supporting nearby countries and boosting the U.S. military presence in Europe. <\/p>\n

Of that $128 billion figure, $70.6 billion has gone to efforts that help Ukraine\u2019s military, chiefly in the form of sending it weapons and munitions. The United States sends military supplies through three key programs. Presidential drawdown authority (PDA) buys new U.S. weapons to replace stockpiled arms sent to Ukraine. Through two separate programs, known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF), Washington buys brand new weapons for Kyiv. Ukraine also acquires weapons on its own and through donations from Western partners.<\/p>\n

The remaining money of the $128 billion has funded humanitarian programs and direct government support<\/a>, which helps Ukraine pay the salaries of first responders, teachers, and other key workers, taking a budgetary burden off Ukraine as it uses its budget revenue<\/a> to prop up its vastly expanded military spending.<\/p>\n

On the military side, Trump is correct in that, in his second term, Congress has announced no new funds for Ukraine. The Biden administration previously announced spending plans for all of the $70.6 billion allocated for military aid, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.<\/p>\n

Instead of asking Congress to approve new funds, the Trump administration has said that European nations will fund the purchase of weapons for Ukraine, with the Netherlands in August becoming the first<\/a> country to announce their participation in the new scheme to support Kyiv.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean that the United States has stopped spending money to support Ukraine militarily. Delivering weapons takes months, and building them from scratch can take years, meaning that only a portion of the previously allocated $70.6 billion in military aid has actually been delivered.<\/p>\n

More than $50 billion in Ukraine-related PDA, USAI, and FMF funding has been appropriated but not actually spent yet, according to the State Department<\/a>. In combination with the funds expected from Europe under Trump\u2019s plan, that means that Ukraine will continue to see levels of military aid<\/a> on par with past years, according to analysis by CSIS.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not enough for offensive operations, according to CSIS advisor Mark Cancian, which typically require the attacking force to have an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions. Still, \u201cit\u2019s a pretty healthy volume\u201d of military aid, Cancian said. That means that Russia will be less likely to make breakthroughs on the battlefield, but so too will Ukraine struggle to regain any ground\u2014essentially freezing the conflict\u2019s lines as they stand.<\/p>\n

On the nonmilitary side, the reality on the ground is also more complex than Trump\u2019s assertion. In terms of direct budgetary aid, the United States has completed the transfer of nearly all of the $33 billion allocated to the Economic Support Fund, the primary means by which Washington has paid into Kyiv\u2019s budget, according<\/a> to the State Department. The United States has not announced any further budgetary aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The gap in U.S. support, among other factors, means that Ukraine will face as much as a $19 billion dollar budget deficit next year, according to the Financial Times<\/a>, theoretically raising the specter of civil servants walking off the job. European Union member states are in discussion about how to make up the budget shortfall.<\/p>\n

In contrast to Trump\u2019s claim, however, the United States continues to spend money on humanitarian aid. Ukraine funding was broadly spared the massive cuts to global aid programs<\/a> made early in the second Trump administration, with 91 percent of funding for Ukraine having survived, according to a June analysis by the New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Surviving programs include efforts to provide water\u2014a key consideration given wartime disruption<\/a> to water supplies\u2014and medical services for children, according to a document sent by the State Department to Congress in March and shared with Foreign Policy.<\/p>\n

Further cuts would not necessarily be catastrophic, said Dafna Rand, a former State Department official who led foreign assistance efforts for Ukraine. That\u2019s in part due to the Ukrainian government and civil society\u2019s success in managing civilian needs as the war has gone on, she said.<\/p>\n

Still, the history of the war has proved Russia adept in putting pressure on Ukraine\u2019s civilians, notably by attacking Ukraine\u2019s energy grid during the winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s really, really cold [this winter], there will be humanitarian concerns,\u201d Rand said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a cabinet meeting last week, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated a key milestone: The United States, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[299,14307,332,1166,1771,657,24666,49,978,659,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-399281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-europe","9":"tag-foreign-aid","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-trump-administration","12":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","13":"tag-ukraine","14":"tag-ukraine-russia","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa","18":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115150297859862218","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}