Biden requests extension for delivering $5.8 billion in Ukraine aid

The Biden administration has requested Congress to include an extension of the presidential drawdown authority (PDA) for sending weapons to Ukraine through 2025, to make approximately $5.8 billion available beyond Sept. 30. 

The White House has requested the extension be included in a continuing resolution House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has proposed. The money faces a use-it-or-lose-it deadline at the end of this month.  

“We have $5.9 billion left in Ukraine Presidential Drawdown Authority; all but $100 million of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year,” said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, in an email to The Hill. 

“The Department will continue to provide drawdown packages in the near future and is working with Congress to seek an extension of PDA authorities beyond the end of the fiscal year.”

The Biden administration has used the drawdown authority to deliver weapons quickly to Ukraine directly through Department of Defense stocks. The funds appropriated by Congress relate to the valuation of the military equipment donated to Ukraine, and the dollars used to backfill U.S. supplies. 

The measure allows the Pentagon to ship out older military equipment and refill stocks with newer equipment. But assistance to Ukraine is often doled out in batches of hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid emptying Pentagon stocks and account for the time to backfill. 

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $250 million in military assistance for Ukraine by using the authority — providing air defense missiles and support, munitions for rocket systems and artillery, anti-tank weapons, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and other armored vehicles, among other items. 

Getting Congress to extend the PDA for the $5.8 billion will allow the White House to continue dispatching to Ukraine military assistance in small batches a few times a month. 

A congressional aide told The Hill that absent the extension, the Biden administration could announce it is providing $5.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine before Oct. 1, and then use the rest of the year to send over the equipment — but that this is a less attractive option. 

There may be some legal challenges to allocating the $5.8 billion at once, the aide explained, with lawyers for the administration concerned that there may not be an authority to permit transfers of munitions that are not currently in stock, or considered in surplus. 

Extending the authority is unlikely to face opposition in the stop-gap funding measure, but Johnson’s pathway to passing the bill is fraught, thanks in part to former President Trump insisting on legislation requiring proof of citizenship for voting — a move that Democrats have said is a nonstarter. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in federal elections.

“This major problem for managing the support for Ukraine is one of the many unnecessary casualties of the political gamesmanship on the CR playing out right now,” the congressional aide said. 

Updated at 4:33 p.m. EST.