On Monday, the White House issued warnings that the funding levels for military aid packages for Ukraine are running critically low and asked for a new aid package — not just for Ukraine — before the year is out. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, stated in a message to Congress that the government is both out of time and money if the US wants to continue to give aid before the year's end.
To reinforce her point, President Joe Biden's administration is begging Congress to act on an aid package to Ukraine that the administration sent to them in October, warning that our national security will be affected by the decision. In her letter to Congress, addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), Young stressed the urgency of the situation.
“I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks. There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money—and nearly out of time,” Young wrote.
“We are out of money to support Ukraine in this fight. This isn’t a next year problem,” she added. “The time to help a democratic Ukraine fight against Russian aggression is right now. It is time for Congress to act.”
In her warning, Young went on to elaborate that the almost $111 billion set aside for Ukraine's military aid has been exhausted, along with the Pentagon using 97 percent of the $62 billion they received just last month, in addition to the State Department's $4.7 billion in aid to the country. Young went on to drive her point home by saying that inaction would "kneecap" Ukraine's efforts on the battlefield and increase chances for a Russian victory. If the request is approved by Congress, Young said that $50 billion would go to domestic national defense restocking efforts, on top of the existing request the White House sent to Congress in October, which earmarked approximately $30 billion to restock our inventory after sending most to Ukraine.
In what one expert is calling a transition to "positional warfare" from "maneuver warfare," the lines between the two forces are becoming more and more static.
“We are in what’s called positional warfare, as opposed to maneuver warfare,” said Frank Ledwidge, a former British military intelligence officer and senior lecturer in war studies at England’s University of Portsmouth. “Basically, we are in the First World War situation, where you have two entrenched armies, neither of which is going to be able to break the other.”
Fighting is likely to grind to an even more definitive halt as bitter weather sets in, with a deadly winter storm wreaking havoc in the region last week...
...“A Ukraine success could alter what’s now widely seen as a stalemate,” said Rajan Menon, an analyst with Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.
The war has reached a deadlock for several reasons, Menon said, including ambivalence and a lack of urgency from Kyiv’s allies, which meant some crucial supplies arrived too late for the counteroffensive to be effective.
With the war in Israel approaching its third month, the war in Ukraine has taken somewhat of a backseat. This would explain the fresh urgency from the Biden White House in their urgent request for Congress to take up the spending package they sent over in October.
In an apparent effort to signal that Ukraine was still a priority for Washinton, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a surprise visit to Kyiv last month, saying Ukraine’s fight is “a marathon — not a sprint” and announcing $100 million in new military aid...“Tactically, the shift in attention from Ukraine to Israel made our situation somewhat more difficult, since our war ceased to be the single hottest point on the planet,” Yehor Chernev, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament and deputy chairman of its national security, defense and intelligence committee, told NBC News.
The hiccup lies with Speaker Johnson, who stated that he is sure that aid packages to both Ukraine and Israel will pass. However, he would like the aid split into two packages, with one for each nation along with money for domestic border security in the Ukraine bill. It is unclear as to when the White House can expect to see a bill, or a set of bills, drafted, let alone passed by the House and Senate.