With Ukrainian officials warning the country lacks the arms to defend itself as Russia pushes its offensive, the US Congress has finally announced plans to bring a package on military aid for Ukraine – which has stalled for months due to Republican scepticism – to a vote in the House of Representatives.
What is the new US plan to help Ukraine?
The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has proposed to split the $95bn aid bill that was originally passed by the Senate in a bipartisan vote in February (including $60bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel and $5bn for Pacific allies including Taiwan) into four separate bills. Each of these would go to an individual vote.
One of the bills would focus on Ukraine (with most of the funding going towards replenishing American munitions), one on Israel, one on Taiwan and Indo-Pacific allies and the fourth on a kind of grab-bag of foreign policy priorities, including banning TikTok in the US, imposing sanctions on Iran and making aid to Ukraine a loan rather than a straight gift.
The details of the four bills have not yet been officially released. But essentially Johnson is proposing to unlink aid for Ukraine – which many Republicans oppose, causing it to languish in the House for months – from aid for Israel, which is more popular with many lawmakers after Iran’s attack on Israel at the weekend.
Controversially, humanitarian aid for Gaza – for which $9bn was allocated in the original Senate bill – may not be included in any of the bills, although it could yet be added (and Democrats insist that bit is non-negotiable). Nor is there any provision for US-Mexico border security, the absence of which Johnson spent months claiming was one of the main reasons he wasn’t bringing the Senate bill to a floor vote in the House.
What are its chances of success?
Each bill would need to pass its own vote, which on the face of it could be difficult. Republicans have only a two-seat majority in the House, and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene immediately denounced the bill as a “sham”. Johnson’s plan received some initial support from other hard-right Republicans, but several of them then expressed scepticism about the speaker’s plan to bundle the bills together when they are sent to the Senate.
“Israel funding should not be held hostage by Ukraine funding,” congressman Andy Biggs, a Republican of Arizona, said on X. “The American people deserve to know where their senators stand on each funding component.”
Many Republicans will also want to be allowed to make amendments to the bill. But Democrats may join Republicans in support of procedural movements and some of the bills themselves.
Once the text is released, House rules require at least three days before a bill goes to a vote – and with the House taking another week-long break on Thursday, that means it could take several weeks before any results.
Then, each bill that is passed by the House would need to go back to the Senate for (re)approval, with no guarantee it would survive.
But Johnson seems to feel he had no choice. Many far-right Republican members oppose Ukraine aid, with some members threatening to torpedo Johnson’s leadership should he bring the original Senate bill to a vote in the House. He reportedly told Joe Biden in a phone call that, although a much more complicated plan with myriad potential obstacles facing each bill, splitting the aid bill into four individual ones was the only solution. “If I do the same thing as the Senate bill, I know we can’t process it,” Johnson told Biden, according to Politico. “This is the only way forward.”
What is the current situation on the battlefield in Ukraine?
With western aid stalling and Russia on the offensive across multiple fronts, Ukraine is nearing its most perilous period since it first repelled Moscow’s full-scale assault in February 2022, stunning the world.
For months, Ukraine has grappled with three pressing challenges: insufficient ammunition, a scarcity of experienced troops amid mounting casualties, and dwindling air defence missiles.
The eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region has been the focal point of Russia’s slow advance, with Russian forces currently aiming to capture the strategically important town of Chasiv Yar.
“The situation on the eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days,” the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, wrote on Telegram, after a visit to the eastern Donetsk region on Saturday.
Syrsky said Russia was hoping to capture Chasiv Yar by 9 May, when Moscow celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany.
What are the other schemes to arm and fund Ukraine?
In addition to military and financial assistance from European Nato allies – including Germany, France and the UK – and others, the Czech Republic is leading a multinational initiative to buy hundreds of thousands of artillery ammunition rounds for Ukraine. The Czechs, through a team of government officials and private companies, have vowed to deliver Ukraine critical ammunition rounds from countries around the world, with first deliveries to Kyiv expected by June.
The Czech plan, which has received support from about 20 countries, is meant to solve Ukraine’s dramatic lack of ammunition at a time when Moscow is ‘‘outshelling’’ Kyiv by a five-to-one ratio. The innovative scheme works by European countries buying the shells from countries in Africa and Asia, such as South Korea, which are unwilling to supply them directly to Ukraine but happy to sell to a third party such as the Czech Republic.
On Monday, the Czech prime minister said his country had already contracted the first 180,000 rounds of ammunition and was working to secure a further 300,000 rounds.
The plan is seen as a temporary measure to fill Ukraine’s ammunition gap, until Europe can produce enough ammunition on its own. The EU has previously admitted that it expected to meet only 52% of a target set last year to deliver a million shells by March.
How is Nato planning to help?
Earlier this month, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, proposed an unprecedented five-year, 100bn euro package of military aid to Ukraine. The initiative aims to alleviate future uncertainty over US military aid to Ukraine by shifting more responsibility to the Nato bloc in coordinating arms support for Kyiv. Currently, most Nato members provide weapons to Ukraine on a bilateral basis, while the bloc has restricted itself to sending non-lethal aid for Ukraine out of fears that a more direct role could lead to an escalation with Russia.
Experts and diplomats have cautioned that Stoltenberg’s plan is at a very early stage and it is unclear whether the 100bn total would be accepted or how it would be financed.
The secretary-general’s plan would upend Nato’s current role and would require consensus among the alliance’s 32 members. Hungary, the most pro-Russian Nato country, has already voiced opposition to the plan.
How would the US’s $60bn aid package help Ukraine?
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has previously warned that his country “will lose the war” if the US Congress fails to approve military aid, indicating the critical importance Kyiv places on the stalled military assistance package.
While US Republican critics of the aid package have voiced anger over what they perceive as excessive assistance to Ukraine, a significant portion of the funds allocated to Kyiv will remain within the US.
Of the $60.7bn for Ukraine, about $20bn would be used by the US to replenish its military stockpiles previously depleted by the push to arm Ukraine. This could open the door for future US military transfers to Ukraine.
Another $14bn will be allocated to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a special program in which the Pentagon buys new weapons for the Ukrainian military directly from US defence contractors.
The US president, Joe Biden, has stressed that the Ukrainian aid bill would boost the US economy, telling voters that almost two-thirds – or nearly $40bn – of the money for Ukraine would actually go to US factories spread across the country.
A third chunk of the funds, roughly $15bn, will be spent on enhancing the capabilities of the Ukrainian military, fostering intelligence collaboration between Kyiv and Washington and bolstering the US presence in eastern Europe.
The support also includes nonmilitary assistance, with about $8bn likely going to help Ukraine’s government continue basic operations, including the payment of salaries and pensions.
The US has so far sent Ukraine roughly $111bn in weapons, equipment, humanitarian assistance and other aid since the start of the war more than two years ago.
