Pentagon: Ukraine will continue receiving aid from US but in smaller packages
Photo: AFP
The United States will continue providing defense assistance to Ukraine within the limits of the Presidential Determination Authority (PDA), with the Pentagon urging Congress to approve additional funding as soon as possible.
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh stated this during a press briefing, Rubryka reports.
"We're going to continue to roll out packages; they just are getting smaller. So we really implore Congress to pass the supplemental request that the President sent up so that we can continue to meet Ukraine's battlefield needs," said the Pentagon representative.
She clarified the estimates reported by the White House the day before, saying that the US has already utilized over 95% of the total $62.3 billion allocated to support Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war.
Singh said that the administration had already used all funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and has approximately $1 billion remaining for PDA packages.
"We've used up all of our USAI funding. And so we only have $1 billion left in existing resources to back fill U.S. stocks. We still do have a small amount of PDA left, but as you've seen, our packages have been getting smaller because we have had to meter out our support for Ukraine," she explained.
She also mentioned Ukraine's reliance on support from other countries and expectations of defense support from other nations, particularly those participating in 'Ramstein' meetings.
Sabrina Singh also announced the upcoming meeting in the 'Ramstein' format. The next meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which will be the 17th, will take place in mid-November.
What do we know about the previous 'Ramstein' meeting?
On October 11, NATO headquarters in Brussels hosted another meeting in the 'Ramstein' format on Ukraine aid, marking the 16th meeting. On the same day, a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council was held. After several meetings within 'Ramstein,' Ukraine received financial and military assistance from partner countries.
During the meeting, President Volodymyr Zelensky raised the issue of additional air defense systems and ammunition for artillery. The United States considers this a priority.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, Charles Brown, said Ukrainian soldiers were determined to continue counteroffensive actions in winter despite the worsening weather.
At the end of October, Ukraine's Minister of Defense, Rustam Umierov, discussed with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin the future meeting in the 'Ramstein' format.
This week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress supported, by a majority vote, a bipartisan bill on using confiscated Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
