Has US Really Only Sent Ukraine 10 Percent of Arms Promised This Year?

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent charge that only ten percent of the military assistance the US said it would transfer to Ukraine this year has actually reached Ukrainian troops, is largely accurate, a Kyiv Post review of figures published by the Pentagon found.

Speaking at a meeting with reporters in Reykjavik on Wednesday, Zelensky said one of Ukraine’s many problems battling Russian invasion is that allied-promised arms assistance arrives too late or not at all - which complicates defense planning and kills and injures Ukrainians.

In the case of the US, Ukraine’s biggest military materiel supporter, a whopping 90 percent of military assistance approved by Congress for FY 2024 has yet to reach the battlefield, the Ukrainian leader said.

“This is the problem. What to do, for example, when Russia gains (more Ukrainian territory and takes) some steps forward in the East? You [Ukraine’s leadership] do your job. You count your reserves. You count on special brigades. You count on such-and-such [foreign-donated] equipment. And then, if you get ten percent of that package, [which has] already been voted on …You know, it’s not funny… the Congress voted. It’s not a question of money, it’s bureaucracy and logistics,” Zelensky said, speaking in English.

At a Wednesday press briefing the Turkish Turan news agency reporter Alex Raufoglu appeared to catch US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller flat-footed with a question about whether, Zelensky’s claim made earlier in the day on the other side of the Atlantic, that only 10 percent of the military aid promised by Washington to Kyiv had actually reached the battlefield was accurate.

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Miller responded by saying, “I am not going to speak to that percentage, I would refer you to my colleagues at the Pentagon, who are in charge of delivering assistance, to speak to the exact number that’s been delivered.  But if you look at the way that we structured the assistance that we have provided, and the way that we have just approved significant new draw-down authorities, it allows us to deliver assistance to Ukraine over time.”

A Kyiv Post request for comment from the Pentagon, sent outside of DC office hours, had not been responded to by the time this article was published.

Based on Pentagon-published official figures, Zelensky’s ten percent delivery claim is probably a fairly, if not absolutely accurate estimate of the actual numbers of US arms put into the hands of Ukrainian troops so far this year, Kyiv Post found.

In a move seriously damaging Ukraine’s ability to fight, the US stopped all military assistance to Kyiv at the end of December because of Congressional wrangling over border law reform and political maneuvering between Democratic and Republican leadership eyeing upcoming elections

The five-month American embargo on arms transfers to Ukraine ended on April 24 when US President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill approving $60.84 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, to be completed by the end of FY2024.

Since then Pentagon aid disbursements, for the most part drawing down existing US hardware or munitions stocks which the funds would replace, have been steady at one or two support packages a month - each almost always valued well below a billion dollars, a volume distinctly less than what would be needed, to buy all the weaponry and assistance Congress approved for Ukraine for the year.

According to the Pentagon figures published in December 2023, a few days before US arms assistance to Ukraine was cut off, the total value of that assistance, counted from the start of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, was $44.9 billion.

An Oct. 21 press release (the most recent on Ukraine assistance published by the Pentagon) placed the value of US military assistance earmarked for Ukraine, incorporating all money actually spent on Ukrainian military support in 2024, at $59.5 billion.

The difference between those two official numbers - $14.6 billion - is less than one quarter of the nearly $61 billion of military assistance approved by Congress in April 2024.

Zelensky’s Wednesday ten percent claim implied that, of the $14.6 billion worth military assistance for Ukraine that the Pentagon had actually said it has earmarked or spent in 2024, slightly more than $6 billion worth is in the hands of Ukrainian troops, and $8.6 billion was paid or will soon be bought, and is so somewhere in the delivery pipeline.

Long lag times between a Pentagon declaration that a weapons system is en route to Ukraine and its actual appearance on the battlefield are a matter of record. The powerful M1 Abrams tank, the planned transfer of which was first formally announced in January 2023, was only reported in country by official sources in September, and actually seen on a battlefield for the first time in November. 

President Joe Biden has said all money earmarked for arms to Ukraine will get spent. On Sept. 26 he announced the US would send more than $5 billion in weapons from Pentagon stocks to Ukraine by January, and contract for the production and delivery of another $2.4 billion for air defense systems, drones and bombs.

Based on pace and scale of Pentagon arms packages sent Ukraine between April and October 2024, and even including the $7.4 billion the US leader said he was planning for in September, the White House and Pentagon are on track to spend markedly less than half of the $60.084 billion Congress approved for Ukraine, Kyiv Post estimates.

Congressionally appropriated money not spent by a US Federal agency during the fiscal year, in which it was approved, is not typically carried over to the next year and is effectively lost.

A Wednesday evening broadcast by Ukraine’s Channel 5 Television, one of the country’s oldest and most widely watched news platforms, was entitled “Why Has Ukraine Received Only Ten Percent of the Assistance Congress Voted For?” It told viewers the 90 percent gap between promised US military aid and actual arms deliveries was real, and exists because Washington is dragging its feet on Ukraine assistance.

The Ukrainian web news magazine Telegraf published an article on Wednesday article about US arms deliveries to Ukraine headlined: “Time to Get Ready for Problems with United States Aid”. Political Scientist Maksym Yakolev said: “Considering the… rift in US politics, Ukraine should prepare for the worst.”

On Oct. 17 Zelensky broached the once-taboo subject of a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent, arguing at a press conference that Ukraine must be allowed to join NATO to stop Russia from invading Ukraine a third time, because Ukraine gave up its own nuclear weapons, at the behest of the US, in the 1990s.

“Ukraine is not asking for anyone to donate nuclear weapons for protection against Russia, nor does Ukraine have any intention to develop them again,” he said.