By Patricia Zengerle and Mike Stone
WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has made legally binding commitments to spend almost all of the $400 million Congress approved for military aid to Ukraine late last year, ensuring that the money will not expire on September 30, according to three sources familiar with the plan.
As of early this week, $307 million of the $400 million of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funding had been obligated, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and the administration plans to lock in the remaining $93 million before the fiscal year ends on September 30.
The Pentagon, which oversees the USAI program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FIRST DELIVERIES INCLUDE WEAPONS, SPARE PARTS
The money has been a source of contention with Congress, as Democrats and some of US President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans have criticized the Pentagon for sitting on the aid for Kyiv, which members of both parties voted for last December.
Trump has in recent months taken a more positive tone toward Ukraine, signing off on a proposal to give a license for Ukraine to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles and signing a Russia sanctions bill.
He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week at UN headquarters in New York, after which Zelenskiy said they had discussed efforts to end the war with Russia, including a potential bilateral ceasefire on energy-related targets.
The first deliveries, which will include offensive weapons and equipment such as spare parts for armored vehicles, began this month. The rest are expected to be delivered before October 2029, the sources said. Trump’s White House term ends in January of that year.
The remaining $93 million in the package approved by Congress does not have to be spent by the end of the year, but it will expire if it is not formally placed under contract by then.
PATRIOT MISSILES NOT INCLUDED
One of the sources said the military equipment did not include Patriot missiles, despite Russia bombarding Ukraine’s cities with drones and ballistic missiles.
The US war in Iran and the Ukraine war have depleted global supplies of Patriots, and Kyiv has been pleading for more.
Reuters reported in July that the administration had told Congress it could take years for the equipment to reach Ukrainian forces. The Pentagon has held up shipments of weapons to Ukraine several times out of concern that US weapons supplies were too low.
Lawmakers said then they were unhappy with the Pentagon’s timeline, considered unusually slow for an ongoing conflict, and the issue has come up repeatedly at congressional hearings.
Ukraine has been by far the top recipient of US foreign aid since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, but the US commitment to Kyiv has been called into question since Trump took office and his Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in January 2025.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Andrew Heavens)
