US President Joe Biden’s administration proposed a provision for FY2025 in Ukraine with the lowest foreign military financing (FMF) package since 2018 as part of the nation’s Presidential Budget Request designed to address a range of domestic and foreign policy objectives.
Released on March 11, 2024, the White House revealed that the FY2025 Presidential Budget will commit just $95 million in FMF assistance to Kyiv. Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, is used by the US State Department as a foreign policy tool to advance US interests with “coalition partners and friendly foreign governments”, providing military training and equipment.
Since 2016, when the US provided $85 million in FMF aid to Ukraine, Washington has not provided a lower package to Kiev.
In a statement, the Office of the Spokesman of the US Department of State said that $482 million was requested for Ukraine. However, when broken down, much of this is committed to non-military programs such as economic recovery efforts and assistance for Kiev’s planned EU membership.
Less than 20% of planned aid will be earmarked for funding directed at military requirements.
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“With the support of its partners, Ukraine can and will defend its sovereignty and democracy,” the State Department’s Office of the Spokesperson said.
According to the latest figures from the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the US heavily used FMF assistance to Ukraine in 2022, the year of Russia’s invasion, committing $1.3 billion to Ukraine. In 2023, the US committed $325 million as other funding streams, such as Presidential Withdrawal Authority packages, came online to provide tens of billions of dollars in military financial aid to Ukraine.
Funding for US military aid to Ukraine has now dried up, with an additional supplemental package in late 2023 still being blocked by Republican lawmakers trying to wring concessions from the incumbent Democratic administration.
In fact, the US is no longer in a position to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia, with the latter country having scored notable battlefield successes in recent months, most recently capturing the symbolic town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. Moscow’s forces continue to push west, with Ukrainian forces starved of much-needed ammunition amid wider battlefield shortages.
Earlier, on March 6, 2024, in a statement seemingly unrelated to the reality of the Ukraine-Russia war, the US State Department announced the creation of a “Ukraine Partnership of Cities for Sustainable Urban Recovery,” a new public-private partnership which aims to “help Ukrainians redesign and rebuild sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities”.
The war in Ukraine has so far seen over 500,000 military casualties and the near total destruction of dozens of towns and villages in the east of the country. In November 2023 the United Nations estimated that nearly 30,000 civilians had been killed or injured in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Russia is expanding the process of “Russification” of occupied Ukraine
Domestic politics in the US would have a significant impact on President Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2025, with national elections expected later in the year. According to IPSOS polling data, President Biden trails former Republican President Donald Trump, who will campaign for re-election under the Republican banner.
A US administration led by Republican President Trump is widely expected to see military funding to Ukraine end, giving Russia renewed emphasis to pursue its ambitions to seize the capital Kiev and with it Ukraine’s potential capitulation.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Defense Intelligence Agency revealed on March 11 that some 2.8 million Ukrainians living in territory annexed by Russia now hold Russian passports, after Moscow’s intensified “Russification” campaign required citizens who lived in occupied territories to register for passports in order to access basic services and utilities.
The deadline for Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories to register for Russian passports is July 1, 2024, after which they will be considered stateless by Moscow. This represents the Russian-enforced nationalization of 6% of Ukraine’s pre-war population.
The result of this process will give Moscow a war cause to renew hostilities in the event of any future cease-fire or peace, in order to defend what she would technically consider her citizens.
On February 26, 2024, Moscow ordered that territories annexed by Ukraine were to come under the military jurisdiction of the Russian Southern Military District in an attempt, according to the UK Defense Services, to make the annexation of the occupied territories “irreversible” territories in Russia.
Moscow used the fictitious justification of military campaigns to protect “citizens” or Russian-speaking peoples when annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia to the neighboring state of Georgia, against which it waged war in 2008 to seize the aforementioned territories.
Read the original at Defence247.gr
